“Can you make things there, as here—shape things out of crude material, I mean?”
“We have no crude material. We have to do only with the finer forces. With us the idea creates. We form the idea, and lo! it immediately is. We think, and the thought takes visible form. Wonderful as this may seem to you, it is nevertheless as true of your world as of this, only the method is slower. The idea is always the true creation, but to make it objective you must give it form with the hands, out of material substance. The imagination is the creative realm.”
“Have we each a guardian angel?”
“Yes; every soul has a guide or helper, who ever works to incline one to good, and away from evil, yet leaves the will free. You, yourself, not he, must make the decisions. He suggests, but does not lead.”
“Who is my guardian angel?” Cartice asked.
“Who could he be if not one who loves you?”
Once only Louis Doring came. He was the same as when here, full of self and empty of all else. Cartice did not encourage him to come again, feeling the distance between them to be greater than ever,—a distance measured by an absence of sympathy, which is the only distance known to the soul. After uttering some of the flavorless nothings which ever characterized his conversation, he went and came no more.
Chrissalyn’s great dread, frequently expressed, was that her husband or some of her near kindred might come. As long as none of her own household came, Planchette did not seem uncanny; but again and again she declared that if any one of them came she would be wretched for the rest of her life. Colonel Layton did not respect her wish, however. One night he took her unawares, as it were. Giving Planchette a peculiar spin, he wrote his name as characteristically as he had ever done in life. When Chrissalyn saw the signature, she burst into uncontrollable sobbing, and begged him to go away.
Cartice consoled her, and implored her to let him remain, while she talked a few moments with him, and this at last Mrs. Layton consented to do.
“Don’t cry, Chriss,” he wrote. “I knew you didn’t want me to come; but I wish to tell you that I am better here than there, just as you are far better without me. So it is well as it is. I was a poor devil there for a fact; but I’m on the up-grade here.”