“My voice sounded preternaturally loud, but I felt no surprise at noticing that it produced no effect upon my visitor. She stood still for perhaps two minutes—though it is very difficult to estimate time on such occasions. She then raised her hands, which were long and white, and held them before her as she sank upon her knees and slowly buried the face in her palms, in the attitude of prayer—when, quite suddenly, the light went out, and I was alone in the darkness.
“I felt that the scene was ended, the curtain down, and had no hesitation in lighting the candle at my side.
“I tried to examine the impression the vision conveyed. I felt that it was definitely that of reproach, yet of gentle resignation. There was no force, no passion; I had seen a meek, sad woman who had succumbed. I began to turn over in my mind the illustrious names of former occupants of the chamber. I fixed on one—a bad man of the worst kind, a mad fool of that time of wickedness and folly, the Regency—I thought of the secret passage in the next room, and began to weave an elaborate romance.
“‘This will not do here and now,’ I reflected, as the clock struck four; and, as an act of mental discipline, I returned to my National Review.... I turned to Mr. Myers’ article on ‘The Drift of Psychical Research,’ which I had already seen. I read:
“‘... Where telepathy operates, many intelligences may affect our own. Some of these are the minds of living persons, but some appear to be discarnate, to be spirits like ourselves, but released from the body, although still retaining much of the personality of earth. These spirits appear still to have some knowledge of our world, and to be in certain ways able to affect it.’
“Here was, so to speak, the text of my illustration. I had quite enough to think about—more than I needed for that occasion. I never heard the clock strike five!
“Let us try to examine this, a type of many ghost stories.
“Elsewhere I have classified visions of persons, whether seen in the crystal or otherwise, as: