"What horrible taste!" Mrs. Fowler shudderingly exclaimed.
"Oh, I don't know," remarked Brierly. "It is actually no worse than having your hand controlled."
"To have a spirit inside of one's throat is a little startling, even to me," I admitted, sympathetically. "But there was more of this business. Another member of the circle—a young man—became entranced, and proceeded to impersonate lost souls, 'earth-bound spirits,' in the manner of our friend Mrs. Harris, and wailed and wept and moaned in most grewsome fashion. However, I think Miller considered both of these performances merely cases of hysteria, induced by the darkness and the constraint of sitting about the table. And perhaps he was correct."
"Anything a doctor doesn't understand he calls hysteria," put in Brierly. "I consider these specialists nuisances."
"Well, anyhow, our 'Amateur Spook-spotter Association' seems to have come to an untimely end," said I, regretfully. "Of the original number, only Brierly remains. Wouldn't our deserters be chagrined if we should now proceed to enjoy a really startling session?"
"We will," Mrs. Smiley responded. "I feel the power all about me."
"Good!" cried Fowler. "That is the way you should feel. If you are at ease, the spirits will do the rest."
"Sit back and rest," I said. "We have plenty of time. You've been too anxious. Don't worry."
In the mean while, between the sitting at Miller's house and this present one, I had been reading much on the subject of the trance and of "the externalization of the fluidic double," of which the Continental philosophers have much to say. If not convinced, I was at least under conviction that the liberation of the astral self was possible (if at all) only in the deepest trance, and I now attempted to discover by interrogation of Mrs. Smiley precisely what her own conception of the process was.