person comes in, years afterwards, perhaps, he sees the whole thing just as it happened. It acts upon his mind first, of course, and then outwards through the senses—just the reverse order to that in which we generally see things.
“Well—that’s only an illustration. Now my idea is this: How do we know whether all the things that happened, from the pencil and the rappings and the automatic writing, right up to the appearances Laurie saw, were not just the result of these inner powers. … Look here. When one person projects his thought to another it arrives generally like a very faint phantom of the thing he’s thinking about. If I’m thinking of the ace of hearts, you see a white rectangle with a red spot in the middle. See? Well, multiply all that a hundred times, and one can just see how it might be possible that the thought of … of Mr. Vincent and Laurie together might produce a kind of unreal phantom that could even be touched, perhaps. … Oh! I don’t know.”
Maggie paused. The girl at her side gave an encouraging murmur.
“Well—that’s about all,” said Maggie slowly.
“But you haven’t—”
“Why, how stupid! Yes: the first theory. … Now that just shows how unreal it is to me now. I’d forgotten it.
“Well, the first theory, my dear brethren, divides itself into two heads—first the theory of the Spiritualists, secondly the theory of Mr. Cathcart. (He’s a dear, Mabel, even though I don’t believe one word he says.)
“Well, the Spiritualist theory seems to me simple R.-O.-T.—rot. Mr. Vincent, Mrs. Stapleton, and the rest, really think that the souls of people actually come back and do these things; that it was, really and truly, poor dear Amy Nugent who led Laurie such a dance. I’m quite, quite certain that that’s not true whatever else is. …