"Can she tell the past?" quizzed Sara Emerson skeptically.
"She can. To Amarna the past is a freshly written page. From her occult vision nothing lies hidden. Let me lead you to her." Elfreda crooked an inviting arm.
With a joyful giggle Sara rose. Accepting the proffered guidance to the seat of the all-wise Amarna, she proceeded to hustle her amiable conductor over the grass toward the grotto at a most indecorous rate of speed, born of her ardent determination to test the mettle of the Seeress of the Seven Veils.
"Go ahead." Releasing Sara's arm, Elfreda gave her a gentle shove toward the grotto and retired into a discreet patch of darkness to chuckle unobserved.
"Stand where you are. I am Amarna," piped a thin, reedy voice. Sara obediently came to a halt in the opening to the grotto and faced a black-draped dais on which the illustrious prophetess reposed. In the chastened yellow glow, cast by an enormous lantern hung directly over where she now paused, Sara was plainly visible to the uncanny figure on its perch. On the contrary, as Amarna sat well in the shadow, her face still hidden behind her veil, she greatly resembled a huge black blot. "You are not the only child in your father's house," continued the high voice. "You have a sister who is your very counterpart. Both saw the light on the same day, March the seventh."
The seeress went on with a detailed narration of various past events in Sara's life which caused her eyes to grow round with wonder. The subsequent prediction of a most remarkable future, in which fate had apparently decreed that she should never marry but end her days as a successful conductor of an art needle-work emporium, sent her scurrying back to her friends divided between wonder of the mysterious being's power to depict the past and disgust at the prospect of such a hum-drum future.
"Do let me interview her next," pleaded Julia Emerson. "But first I shall run up to my room and get my scarf. If Amarna can swathe her distinguished features, so can I. Then she won't know I'm a twin. I must say she seems better at reading the past than predicting the future. I don't see how she could tell a single thing about you, Sara, when you just stood still there. Fortune-tellers generally ask to look at one's palm." Having delivered herself of this wise opinion, Julia flitted off to the house to secure the disguising scarf.
"I defy you to pick me out as a twin," was her merry challenge, when returning to the group on the lawn she wound her long chiffon scarf twice about her head. "Thank goodness, Sarah and I never dress alike. You'll have to lead me, J. Elfreda Briggs. I can see, of course; but rather dimly."
Elfreda again performed the kindly office of conductor, leaving Julia in precisely the same spot where Sara had lately stood.
"The eyes of Amarna cannot be deceived," calmly reproved the black shape on the dais. "They see behind the flimsy veil and deep into your thoughts. Your face is as the face of her who so lately sought me. The bond of sisterhood stretches between you. That which is invisible to the naked eye is visible to me. The road of the past winds clear and white before me. Now I perceive that you——"