"What does he say?" gasped Mr. Brown.
"I have it here," replied Olga breathlessly.
CHAPTER XXVI
A Voice from Another World
Dick Faversham walked along Oxford Street thinking deeply. Although he had been by no means convinced by what he had seen and heard, he could not help being impressed. The whole of the proceedings might be accounted for by jugglery and clever trickery, or, on the other hand, influences might have been at work which he could not understand—influences which came from the unseen world. But nothing satisfied him. Everything he had experienced lacked dignity. It was poor; it was sordid. He could not help comparing the outstanding features of the séance with the events which had so affected him. The face of the woman in the smoking-room of the steamer, the sublime figure which had upheld him when he was sinking in the wild, stormy sea, was utterly removed from the so-called spirits who had obeyed the summons of the mediums, and acted through them. How tawdry, too, were the so-called messages compared with the sublime words which had come to him almost like a whisper, and yet so plainly that he could hear it above the roar of the ocean:
"The Eternal God is thy Refuge, and underneath are the Everlasting Arms."
This was sublime—sublime in the great comfort it gave him, sublimer still in what it signified to the life of the world.
"It's true, too!" he exclaimed aloud, as he threaded his way along the crowded thoroughfare. "True!"