He was in the midst of an elaborate defence of spirit methods when Viola's hand began to leap as if struggling to be free. She moaned and sighed and writhed so powerfully that her chair creaked. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she cried, gaspingly.
"Is she trying to free her hands?" Morton asked himself, with roused suspicion. "Is this a ruse to cover some trick?"
Mrs. Lambert spoke quietly. "She is going! Sing something, Anthony."
Clarke began to hum a monotonous tune, while Morton, bending towards the girl, listened to her gurgling moans with growing heartache. "She seems in great pain, Mrs. Lambert. Don't you think we'd better release her? I do not care to purchase sensation so clearly at her expense."
"Don't be alarmed, she always seems to suffer that way when some great manifestation is about to take place."
The poor girl's outcries so nearly resembled those of a death struggle that Kate at last rose. "Turn up that light! She is being strangled!"
"Please be silent!" said Clarke, almost angrily. "Take your hands from her, gentlemen! You are too 'strong'—and do not startle her! Be quiet everybody!"
Morton took his hand away in anger and disgust. "All this is a ruse to weaken our grasp upon her," he thought. "Even the mother, so serene, so candid, is aiding the deception."
"Things will happen now," remarked Mrs. Lambert, confidently; "she is giving herself up at last."
The girl drew a long, deep, peaceful sigh, and became silent, so silent that Morton, leaning far over, with suspended breath, his ear almost to her lips, could detect no sound, no slightest movement, and listening thus he had for an instant a singular vision of her. He seemed to see her laughing silently at him from a distant upper corner of the room, and for the moment secured a glimpse into a new and amazing world—the world of darkness and silence wherein matter was fluid, imponderable, an insubstantial world peopled, nevertheless, with rustling, busy souls.