She has changed slightly since we saw her. She is even thinner and more ethereal looking than she was then. Her eyes have a pained, timid look in them, as if the life she is leading is fraught with haunting ghosts and mocking spectres, with tortured nerves and sleepless nights. Mrs. Lucien has had much to cause her extreme dejection and pain.
These exhibitions which she gives are for the most part but as dreams to her. She has little realization of what she says or does in the trance state into which she passes. But it has happened once or twice that she has been unable to become fully passive and entranced. Then she has been obliged to simulate such a condition or wholly disappoint her audience and make an utter failure of her work. It is the fear of this deception, to which she may be compelled to resort at any time, which frightens her and fills her with self-loathing.
She has that fear upon her now as she comes forward and sits down before the audience, her pale face waxen in the gaslight.
If she should fail! She sits very still, seeking to hold her thoughts in abeyance, that she may woo that sweet forgetfulness and waking dream which reveals to her the mysteries of the invisible.
It is coming.
Her hands grow cold and sink weightily upon her lap. She feels the mystic power enveloping her, creeping down, over and around her. The lights grow dimmer and dimmer. Her eyelids are freighted with leaden compresses.
Soon eyes and ears are closed to all external sights and sounds. Strange melodies, fitful and harmonious, sound within, and strange lights, like electric sparks, flash across and illumine the recesses of her brain.
She feels as if mind and body had become separate and apart. Thoughts new and uncalled for come to overwhelm her. Then voices from out of the distance are heard. Words, words come in numbers, half-consciously to her lips, but she hears them as afar off. She sees with closed eyes, and in this inner vision message after message written out before her.
Words written upon a scrap of paper and crushed in her hand stand out in bright distinctness before her mental vision. Words in languages other than those she speaks are known to her. She forgets them as soon as uttered. No—hark! “Tell Harry his mother is waiting for him.�
Did her lips utter those words? She cannot tell. Words, words, words—where do they come from? She is under control. No power or volition of her own consciousness moves her. Songs, sweet songs, she hears. Does she sing them? Is she out of mortal life or in it?