"It is quite as bad at that," returned Britt. "You see, the mother has been for years in close daily communion—as she supposes—with her husband, her little son, and others of her dead. Half of her daily life is in these joys, the other half in her daughter. There stood the wall that stopped me. I couldn't express my doubt to the mother. I couldn't apply the clamps. I simply withdrew. I do not intend to pursue the matter to a finish so long as the mother is alive."
Morton's face was clouded with pain. "Let us drop the Lamberts as a subject; they are too distressing, especially as I see no way of helping them. When do you return?"
Kate acquiesced in her brother's diversion of the stream of talk, but an hour later, as Britt was about to go, she seized the opportunity to say: "You must not fail to take me to see this girl. I have never been so excited about any one in my life. Can't you take me to-morrow?"
"I am entirely at your service. Suppose I call at four—will that do?"
"Perfectly. I'm very grateful to you."
"I hope you won't come to curse me for it. I warn you, the girl is damnably convincing. She may enamour you."
"No fear of that," she cried, in defiant brightness. "I'm not so easily fooled."
She re-entered the library with the flush of an excited conviction in her face. "Morton, I feel as if I had taken part in the dissection of a human soul."
He threw up his hand with a gesture of pain and despair. "Don't! I can only hope that girl is utterly bad. Otherwise she is the sport of devils. Help me forget the whole uncanny business."
"You're wrong," she said, firmly. "It is just such men as you and Dr. Weissmann who should snatch the pearl of truth from this bucket of mental mire."