Julian laughed too.
"Oh, it seems absurd—but he'd tell us to sit together."
"Well, we are sitting together now."
"No; at a table, I mean."
"Table-turning!" Valentine cried, with a sort of contempt. "That is for children, and for all of us at Christmas, when we want to make fools of ourselves."
"Just what I am inclined to think. But Marr—and he's really a very smart, clever chap, Val—denies it. He swears it is possible for two people who sit together often to get up a marvellous sympathy, which lasts on even when they are no longer sitting. He says you can even see your companion's thoughts take form in the darkness before your eyes, and pass in procession like living things."
"He must be mad."
"Perhaps. I don't know. If he is, he can put his madness to you very lucidly, very ingeniously."
Valentine stroked the white back of Rip meditatively with his foot.
"You have never sat, have you?" he asked.