I said I had no wish to doubt, but that unless this message came from some other than Mary K., I could not believe her again, if it proved, as I was sure it would, to be untrue. I began to suspect that disintegrating forces were at work.
“It comes from the constructive force. Be confident. It perplexes you.”
Later experience has taught me that while either force may be in complete command at moments, during these struggles for control, not infrequently a message begun by one is finished by the other. During the three days of this first persistent attack, however, I held no key to the mystery, and the occasional clearly constructive and characteristic messages from Mary K. and Maynard Holt merely added to my bewilderment and dismay. Yet never for one instant during those three days did I accept the repeated statements of Mr. Farrow’s death as true. Weeks afterward, Mary K. told me why I was not deceived.
Since that time, too, I have learned more clearly to distinguish personality by the degree and quality of force applied to the pencil, which varies greatly with individuals, though it sometimes varies in the same individual at different times. But in the first experience it did not occur to me to apply that test of identification.
All that Saturday afternoon the argument went on at intervals, I insisting that Mr. Farrow was not dead, the pencil reiterating that he was.
At two o’clock Maynard said: “Believe in us, Margaret. We can help you better.” It is evident now that this referred to the conflict with the disintegrating force, but at the moment I misunderstood it and reminded him of the many specific and inaccurate statements made, during the past few days, regarding the man who was coming that evening by appointment, asking if this were more misinformation of the same sort, to which the reply was: “No, Farrow is here. He is dazed, but will be taken care of.”
An hour later, I returned to the pencil, begging them to tell me, before definite information reached me from other sources, that there had been a mistake.
“Mary K. You must not doubt. We shall lose control of you if you do.” When I said that what I sought was truth, she said: “I know, but you doubt our control, and weaken it.”
“I also doubt my own correctness.”