“Make your mind a blank—relax,” said Madame Clara, her tone once more a commanding one.
Elsie moved uneasily in her chair and fixed her eyes on the crystal. She could only see it faintly, a glassy spot of uncertain outline.
The seeress bent forward, leaning over the transparent globe. After a moment or two she began to speak, with the same voice and intonation that she had made use of in speaking about Irene.
“The crystal reflects all things, but Time is an arbitrary division made by man—we do not always see what is past, and what is future.... In your case, there is very little past—how young you are!—and what there is, is all on one plane, the physical. You are magnetic, extraordinarily magnetic. You have known men—you are married, if not by man’s law, then by nature’s law—you will know other men. But you are not awake—your mind is asleep. Nothing is awake but your senses....”
Elsie’s mouth was dry. She longed to stop the woman but a horrible fascination kept her silent, tensely listening.
“Now you are bored—satiated. You have repeated the same experience again and again, young as you are, until it means nothing to you. You have no outside interests—and you are ceaselessly craving for a new emotion.”
Abruptly the sibyl dropped on to a dark note.
“It will come. I see love here—love that you have never known yet. There will be jealousy, intrigue—letters will pass—beware of the written word——Ah!”
The exclamation was so sudden and so piercing that Elsie uttered a stifled scream. But this time she was not rebuked.
Madame Clara, all at once, was calling out shrilly in a hard voice, an indescribable blend of horror and excitement in her tone: