“I—I haven’t thought of them,� replies Lissa. “How could I when these poor animals and—and our house were in such danger.�
CHAPTER XII
A NEW MEDIUM
“My dear Mrs. Lucien—why, what is the matter?�
Mrs. Wylie ran hurriedly to her friend’s side, but stopped, frightened at the unseeing, vacant stare which met her. During the fortnight intervening since the seance she had met her friend daily, but never had seen her as now.
Mrs. Lucien sat by a small sewing-table, her hands resting upon it, her eyes gazing vacantly into space. Her expression was uncanny in its fixity, and her hands moved restlessly over the smooth surface before her. Her aspect was that of one whose outer senses were locked and all thought and sight turned inward.
The little Dolores, who had opened the door to Mrs. Wylie, resumed her position by her mother, her hands resting in her mother’s lap, her troubled eyes searching her mother’s face.
Mrs. Wylie, unable to win any response or recognition, stood silent and frightened, watching the entranced woman. Then her eyes fell upon the swiftly moving fingers. What was she doing? Surely she was forming letters—writing. Was it possible? She seemed to see her own name spelled from the ends of those fingers. Mrs. Wylie had seen such things before from professed mediums. Suddenly a thought came to her. She detached the little gold pencil from her watch guard and laid in with her shopping-tablet on the table before the woman. In a moment Mrs. Lucien seized the pencil and was writing rapidly, her eyes still fixed and unseeing.
When she at last relinquished the tablet Mrs. Wylie took it up, and read in letters scrawling and unlike the chirography of her friend, the following:
“My dear friend:
“Why do you hesitate on the dark borders of prejudice and ignorance? Why not come into the full light of the truth? Our hands would gladly lead you if you would take them. There is much to believe that is truth; there is much to reject that is untruth. You accept much untruth. But you shall soon know all.