“Dearest—” she began.
“No; it is nothing, darling,” said Lady Laura.
Meanwhile the medium was picking his way through the foggy streets.
Figures loomed up, sudden and enormous, and vanished again. Smoky flares of flame shone like spots of painted fire, bright and unpenetrating, from windows overhead; and sounds came to him through the woolly atmosphere, dulled and sonorous.
It would, so to speak, have been a suitably dramatic setting for his thoughts if he had been thinking in character, vaguely suggestive of presences and hints and peeps into the unknown.
But he was a very practical man. His Spiritualistic faith was a reality to him, as unexciting as Christianity to the normal Christian; he entertained no manner of doubt as to its truth.
Beyond all the fraud, the self-deception, the amazing feats of the subconscious self, there remained certain facts beyond doubting—facts which required, he believed, an objective explanation, which none but the Spiritualistic thesis offered. He had far more evidence, he considered sincerely enough, for his Spiritualism than most Christians for their Christianity.
He had no very definite theory as to the spiritual world beyond thinking that it was rather like this world. For him it was peopled with individualities of various characters and temperaments, of various grades and achievements; and of these a certain