Now the medium's hands were broad, short, and flabby, as I had had plenty of opportunities of noting in the afternoon when he held my wrist. The hands which grasped mine now were, on the contrary, well made, small, and rather narrow, the true type of the American female hand.
Mr Thompson had come up also to greet "Julia," and I whispered to him:
"Do ask Julia if there was not a mistake about her age this afternoon."
"No; you ask the question yourself, Miss Bates," he answered.
So I said rather eagerly: "Julia, do tell us, please, if there was not a mistake this afternoon in your age—the answer was twenty-three. Is that correct?"
A very emphatic shake of the head signifying "No" was the reply to this last question, but no sounds proceeded from the lips.
Disappointed by this, I asked; "Can you not speak to us?"
She made a little gesture of rather helpless dissent; and Mrs Gray, who stood by, explained that probably all her strength had gone to building up the materialised body sufficiently to make it visible to us. Julia bowed her head in assent to this, and then, still speechless, retired once more behind the curtains.
I did not mention this appearance of Julia when writing to Mr Stead on my return—I was so anxiously hoping that she might have tried to impress the fact of having appeared to me, upon his consciousness, as a test; but he said nothing about it in his first letters. So I let the matter alone for a time, determining to tell him some day, but much disappointed by the usual failure in getting corroborative evidence.
A week later, however, at the end of a long letter on other subjects, I put this short P. S. in a casual way to him: