Browne nodded sympathetically.
“Dan’s ‘Madonna’ is her half-sister. They were as alike as twins externally, but my old love, Eweretta, was intellectual, while her half-sister was said to be weak-minded. I begin to think that the weak-mindedness was an invention to excite the father’s pity. There is no sign of weak-mindedness about Aimée Le Breton—that is the ‘Madonna’s’ name. Well, of course, the amazing likeness to her sister will in your opinion explain what I am going to say to you. To me it is not an explanation. It was just when I was saying good-bye to Miss Le Breton that I swear to you I saw her dead sister’s soul looking out of her eyes. I shall never forget the experience as long as I live.”
“This is enormously interesting!” exclaimed Browne, the psychic enthusiast. “You say that Miss Le Breton was supposed to be weak-minded. The bodies of such are very easily entered by spirits. It is more than possible that you did see the spirit of your lost love.”
“It is more than possible that my brain was not normal,” Philip observed. “But I have never been able to shake the feeling off. I was so moved at the time that I very nearly made a fool of myself. I had the greatest difficulty in preventing myself from catching the girl to my heart.”
“There would have been ructions with Dan if you had!” Browne told him.
“She would not have forgiven me,” Philip went on, unheeding the interruption. “She is very different from Eweretta in some ways, but at that one moment I say I saw Eweretta’s soul looking out of her eyes.”
“Forgive me, now, for jumping in on your most inter-es-ting conversation,” came in a voice which made both men start.
The owner of the voice was a woman of about forty, whose ample figure was adorned by an undoubted Paris gown.
CHAPTER XXXIX
A SUPERNATURAL HAPPENING
“I could not help listening,” the woman half apologized with a good-humored smile. “You see, I am so ‘dead nuts’ on things psychic, and I can tell you gentlemen a re-markable story, which may interest you, and which my husband, who is just now en-joying a cocktail, can vouch for. That gentleman” (indicating Philip with a fat, white hand sparkling with jewels), “thinks he saw his dead sweetheart looking out of another woman’s eyes. Now, that was a very tall story, or would be to some people’s thinking, because the second lady must be supposed to have a spirit of her own to accommodate in her body already. But I can very well believe it. With your permission, I will bring my cup to your table. Fortunately, everyone has left us now, and we can be just comfortable.”