Amongst the large crowd of ultra-fashionable people who held tickets which would admit them to the public temporary carnal-house, when the examination by the law had been concluded, was Mrs. Grange, with her enamoring graces. She was giving some fashionably dressed men near by, the benefit of her first impression of the Governor and Miss Hinckley. At the same time she was coquetting with her eyes, in the hope, no doubt, of getting another promise from someone to help get her husband a higher salary.
The Governor’s party heard the remark, “It is a shame, Mrs. Grange, that a woman so surpassingly beautiful as yourself, is not the wife of a millionaire. I believe,” continued her flatterer, “that you have been a subject, and without any jesting whatever, I know your engaging manners could induce the Governor to teach you how to extract liquid from the sun’s rays. And having been a subject, you could teach from your own experience, and your husband could run the business. Your names would go down to posterity then as renowned scientists.”
“How lovely,” smiled Mrs. Grange. “How kind of you to think of it.”
“Not at all, Mrs. Grange,” continued her admirer; “not at all. It would be much easier for you to tell of its wonders and your own experiences, than to spend so much sweetness canvassing for your husband. It is too bad his voice failed. That is what I heard you say in the year of eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, in El Paso, Texas.”
Mrs. Grange’s countenance fell, and she only gave him a glance now and then from under her brow.
Not in the least abashed, the gentleman continued: “It was at the time that he was connected with some road, less than one hundred miles long, that extended from the Pass City, which was then, if you remember your own expression, ‘nothing more than a rough border-town, absolutely without any dramatic talent or voice culture.’ Oh, well, that is all past and gone, Mrs. Grange; even the remembrance of the little dramatic performance in which you displayed your enamoring graces, is known only to the initiated.”
“Then you remember!” exclaimed Mrs. Grange, looking at him with a frightened look in her face. “Great God! if others and others continue taking ‘Memory Fluid,’ and they look upon me with the scorn that you do, and speak to me with the satire you do, I will be tempted to take Ebony Fluid, after I learn to will my soul away, that I may preserve the physical shape of this life. I want to close the present life and have an opportunity to come again, and then I will live the life of a rational being. A thousand times or more my heart has almost consumed itself with shame, since I have remembered, at the thoughts of my actions in the Pass City, and in this life also. Then I flaunted myself before the public, flirted with men, drank beer, wine, anything that would make me more lively—danced and otherwise dissipated, until my life was wrecked and my reputation gone. In this life I have done much the same things, and added to them the accomplishment of doing men for all they were worth, under the pretence of soliciting for my husband. Unfortunately for me, I have the same one I had in the other life. He has gone through much the same experiences, losing his voice and all. Great God! I hope I may be spared in another existence, the same family relations I have in this life and the desire to be a professional beauty and a hypocrite in general.”
“You are saved, Mrs. Grange. The desire you have this moment voiced, will be the means of your salvation, if you at once change your mode of action to one that accords with Law, and continue, to the best of your instruction, to live in touch with the Unseen. I have often thought that you were destined to be mine,” said the gallant, rich and lettered man by her side.
Mrs. Grange gave one long gasp as she exclaimed: “Since taking ‘Memory Fluid’ I have known it to be a fact. In another life it will come to pass,” and fell back amongst the crowd in a dead faint. A cab was hailed and she was immediately taken to her home, and a physician, who had knowledge of “Memory Fluid,” sent to attend her; her gallant friend accompanied her.
Governor Lehumada, Señor Guillermo Gonzales and Miss Helen Hinckley entered the room where lay the physical transformation of the once invincible Señorita Marriet Motuble, and the two instigators of the rebellion.