"It began after the first days of the war. But at first the voices were indistinct, and the visions vague and shadowy. I did not mind that. I thought it would wear off, and the spirits go away. They did for a while, but after the battle of Mons suddenly at night I saw an awful picture, not the battle field, but the ascending shades drifting upward from it like innumerable specks of vapor. Ah Alfred, how shall I describe it? I seemed to be carried there. It was a dream, and yet it was full of reality to me, and the ground, the wrecked villages, the streets strewn with the dead and dying, were all half hidden; sometimes in the dream altogether erased, by the multitudes of the shades going on, and on, and on, up and up, and up, in smoky masses, with faces and limbs spectral and ghostly, like some vast current of fog shaped into human forms."
"Well," I groaned, "what next?"
"I awoke, and there was nothing—nothing—but an hour later the voices were resumed and they murmured and murmured, and words now and then were understood, like 'Have Mercy'—'Oh God my wife'—'My home,' and then furious words like blasphemies. Ah Alfred, it was terrible," and the woman hid her face in my lap and shook convulsively.
"Gabrielle, my sister, how have you gone through with all this misery? Our father and mother dead, and these horrible visitations! I must get well quickly and together we will go to St. Choiseul, and then I can see for myself if such things can be."
"Can be, Alfred? You do not doubt me, do you? I am indeed telling you the very truth, and you will wound me to the heart if you think that I have been deluded, or am deceiving you."
Her loving, tender eyes were filled with the tears of remonstrance. I seized her arms, and brought her to my breast, and embraced and kissed her, whispering with all the devotion of my soul, "No Gabrielle, I know that these things have, in their way, happened, and that your tired senses and strained nerves may have actually created them, worn out as we all are with this grievous trial. And the Prayers, darling. What were they when they were intelligible? Could you make them out—tell me."
"At first I could only recognize them as supplications by the imploring voices, and then later they often became distinguishable as short cries for help and mercy, and deliverance, and then short staccato calls, as if from madness, insanity, brutality, unrighteousness. Lately and here in Paris I have not heard them, and I control myself better—" the last words were spoken by my sister hesitatingly, or at least slowly, as if she felt unwilling to utter them. I noticed the indecision at once.
"What is it, Gabrielle—your control? Have you yielded to the old temptation—the feeling that you wished to summon the DEAD?"
"Alfred," the voice was very low, and Gabrielle cast her eyes down, as if depressed by some unwonted shame of contrition; "Alfred, although I say that I exert no power to open the communications with the spirit world, yet I believe that in some unconscious way I actually summon these to me. Watching myself in the voluntary movements of my mind, I detect at times that without my volition, my mind assumes the mediumistic poise, as the books say. I am ashamed of it, and I think it is wicked. That makes me dread these visions for, perhaps, they are simply satanic. Oh what shall I do?"