“Ha, ha, ha!” snickered the poet. I can see his close cropped yellow beard and his red face wrinkling in merriment at this supposition.
“I hate your Greenwich Village philosophy,” stormed Penelope. “You haven't the courage, the understanding to commit one big splendid sin that even the angels in heaven might approve, but you fritter away your souls and spoil your bodies in cheap little sins that are just—disgusting!”
The poet shrivelled under her scorn.
“But—one splendid sin?” he stammered. “That means a woman must go to her mate, doesn't it?”
“Without marriage? Never! I'll tell you what a woman should do—I'll tell you what I would do, just to prove that I am not conventional, I would act on the principle that there is a sacred right God has given to every woman who is born, a right that not even God Himself can take away from her, I mean the right to—”
A muffled scream interrupted her, a quick catching of the breath by a stout lady, a newcomer, who was seated on a divan, I should have judged this woman to be a rather commonplace person except that her deeply sunken eyes seemed to carry a far away expression as if she saw things that were invisible to others. Now her eyes were fixed on Penelope.
“Oh, the beautiful scarlet light!” she murmured. “There! Don't you see—moving down her arm? And another one—on her shoulder! Scarlet lights! My poor child! My poor child!”
Ordinarily we would have laughed at this, for, of course, we saw no scarlet lights, but somehow now we did not laugh. On the contrary we fell into hushed and wondering attention, and, turning to Roberta, we learned that this was Seraphine, a trance medium who had given séances for years to scientists and occult investigators, and was now assisting Dr. W——, of the American Occult Society.
“A séance! Magnificent! Let us have a séance!” whispered the poet. “Tell us, madam, can you really lift the veil of the future?”
But already Seraphine had settled back on the divan and I saw that her eyes had closed and her breathing was quieter, although her body was shaken from time to time by little tremors as if she were recovering from some great agitation. We watched her wonderingly, and presently she began to speak, at first slowly and painfully, then in her natural tone. Her message was so brief, so startling in its purport that there can be no question of any error in this record.