“You, with your knowledge, believed it possible for an embodied spirit to communicate with the immaterial?” asked Helven, leaning back in his chair, surprised.
“I did not believe, but I—shall I say, hoped? No, scarcely that. Mr. Helven, when loss and grief and anxiety are brought close home to us, to our very hearts, where are we? Where are theories, beliefs?”
Helven looked at Hugh, whose pale cheeks were flushed with excitement, as he might have looked at a newly-found specimen of a rare genus.
“I have never married,” he said, dryly. “I do not understand these family feelings.”
“Would you understand a being who rose from the dead to bear witness to your theories?” asked Hugh.
“When it happens, I will tell you my opinion,” said Helven.
“It has happened to me,” said Dr. Paull. “At least, when you hear what I have to tell you, you will, I think, be glad that we have met—years ago and now.”
Helven assured him he was not credulous, nor easily convinced.
“Hear me before you say more,” said Hugh. Then he recounted his meeting with the princess, the attraction she had felt for him, the deep, almost terribly strong affection that he had discovered to exist for her in his mind, and the mystery of her visions of the crucial hour of his life.
“What you say is peculiar, and would certainly bear favourably upon the development of a case of transmigration,” Helven admitted. “But there are other theories to be considered. We do not at present understand the influence that embodied spirits have upon each other.”