“I don’t think so at all,” said Georgie. “I think it’s most curious, for I wasn’t thinking about that a bit. What else does it say? ‘Vittoria bids you keep love and loyalty alive in your hearts. Vittoria has suffered, and bids you be kind to the suffering.’”
“That’s curious!” said Lucia. “That might apply to Pepino, mightn’t it?... O Georgie, why, of course, that was in both of our minds: we had just been talking about it. I don’t say you pushed intentionally, and you mustn’t say I did, but that might easily have come from us.”
“I think it’s very strange,” said Georgie. “And then, what came over you, Lucia? You looked only half conscious. I believe it was what the planchette directions call light hypnosis.”
“No!” said Lucia. “Light hypnosis, that means half-asleep, doesn’t it? I did feel drowsy.”
“It’s a condition of trance,” said Georgie. “Let’s try again.”
Lucia seemed reluctant.
“I think I won’t, Georgie,” she said. “It is so strange. I’m not sure that I like it.”
“It can’t hurt you if you approach it in the right spirit,” said Georgie, quoting from the directions.
“Not again this evening, Georgie,” she said. “To-morrow perhaps. It is interesting, it is curious, and somehow I don’t think Vittoria would hurt us. She seemed kind. There’s something noble, indeed, about her message.”
“Much nobler than Abfou,” said Georgie, “and much more powerful. Why, she came through at once, without pages of scribbles first! I never felt quite certain that Abfou’s scribbles were Arabic.”