Celia was silent, and Mme. Dauvray went on in a voice of awe:
"I told her of the wonderful things which happened when I sat with Helene in the dark—how the room filled with strange sounds, how ghostly fingers touched my forehead and my eyes. She laughed—Adele Rossignol laughed, Celie. I told her of the spirits with whom we held converse. She would not believe. Do you remember the evening, Celie, when Mme. de Castiglione came back an old, old woman, and told us how, when she had grown old and had lost her beauty and was very lonely, she would no longer live in the great house which was so full of torturing memories, but took a small APPARTEMENT near by, where no one knew her; and how she used to walk out late at night, and watch, with her eyes full of tears, the dark windows which had been once so bright with light? Adele Rossignol would not believe. I told her that I had found the story afterwards in a volume of memoirs. Adele Rossignol laughed and said no doubt you had read that volume yourself before the seance."
Celia stirred guiltily.
"She had no faith in you, Celie. It made me angry, dear. She said that you invented your own tests. She sneered at them. A string across a cupboard! A child, she said, could manage that; much more, then, a clever young lady. Oh, she admitted that you were clever! Indeed, she urged that you were far too clever to submit to the tests of some one you did not know. I replied that you would. I was right, Celie, was I not?"
And again the appeal sounded rather piteously in Mme. Dauvray's voice.
"Tests!" said Celia, with a contemptuous laugh. And, in truth, she was not afraid of them. Mme. Dauvray's voice at once took courage.
"There!" she cried triumphantly. "I was sure. I told her so. Celie, I arranged with her that next Tuesday—"
And Celia interrupted quickly.
"No! Oh, no!"
Again there was silence; and then Mme. Dauvray said gently, but very seriously: