"Well, wait a few days until I get stronger, and then I will dictate to you my experiences, and you shall write them down, and we will publish a book about them. I think they will make good reading. You must know, Renée, that the moment I went into the deep sleep or trance, my soul (or Ego) left the body and went far away, and only returned to it about the 19th January."
"Why that was when dear mother came to see me."
"Precisely," Delapine nodded. "She was watching over you all the time, but she was unable to reveal herself in a visible tangible form, unless there was a suitable medium who was en rapport with her. Fortunately I was such a medium, and the moment I returned to my body she seized the opportunity which she had been long waiting for to reveal herself to you in bodily form by building herself out of the particles of my body."
"How strange!" they all exclaimed.
"Yes," said the professor, "I have studied these things deeply. I have discovered that all spiritualistic phenomena are governed by laws which are just as fixed and unalterable as are the laws which govern all the phenomena of this visible world. We have only to learn and understand how spiritual phenomena are produced and controlled by these laws, to extend our conquest over the invisible world of science in the same way that we have extended our knowledge over the visible world of science during the last three hundred years. Spiritual science is only in the same stage of knowledge and advancement in which electricity was at the time of Volta, or steam at the time of Watt."
"Oh, do tell us about it," they all said.
But no answer came. The professor's excitement had proved too much for him in his weak state, and when they looked at him he was sleeping peacefully as a little child with a happy smile on his face.
"Hush," said Renée, and she put her fingers to her lips.
All the guests crept out of the room in silence, leaving Renée alone to nurse her lover.
Day by day Delapine grew stronger, thanks to the careful nursing of Renée and to the medical skill of Riche and Villebois.