“Positively uncanny . . . at times.”  Lute shivered involuntarily.  “She gives me the creeps.”

“Contact of the healthy with the morbid,” he explained dryly.  “You will notice it is the healthy that always has the creeps.  The morbid never has the creeps.  It gives the creeps.  That’s its function.  Where did you people pick her up, anyway?”

“I don’t know—­yes, I do, too.  Aunt Mildred met her in Boston, I think—­oh, I don’t know.  At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to California, and of course had to visit Aunt Mildred.  You know the open house we keep.”

They halted where a passageway between two great redwood trunks gave entrance to the dining room.  Above, through lacing boughs, could be seen the stars.  Candles lighted the tree-columned space.  About the table, examining the Planchette contrivance, were four persons.  Chris’s gaze roved over them, and he was aware of a guilty sorrow-pang as he paused for a moment on Lute’s Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe middle age and genial with the gentle buffets life had dealt them.  He passed amusedly over the black-eyed, frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and halted on the fourth person, a portly, massive-headed man, whose gray temples belied the youthful solidity of his face.

“Who’s that?” Chris whispered.

“A Mr. Barton.  The train was late.  That’s why you didn’t see him at dinner.  He’s only a capitalist—­water-power-long-dis
tance-electricity-transmitter, or something like that.”

“Doesn’t look as though he could give an ox points on imagination.”

“He can’t.  He inherited his money.  But he knows enough to hold on to it and hire other men’s brains.  He is very conservative.”

“That is to be expected,” was Chris’s comment.  His gaze went back to the man and woman who had been father and mother to the girl beside him.  “Do you know,” he said, “it came to me with a shock yesterday when you told me that they had turned against me and that I was scarcely tolerated.  I met them afterwards, last evening, guiltily, in fear and trembling—­and to-day, too.  And yet I could see no difference from of old.”

“Dear man,” Lute sighed.  “Hospitality is as natural to them as the act of breathing.  But it isn’t that, after all.  It is all genuine in their dear hearts.  No matter how severe the censure they put upon you when you are absent, the moment they are with you they soften and are all kindness and warmth.  As soon as their eyes rest on you, affection and love come bubbling up.  You are so made.  Every animal likes you.  All people like you.  They can’t help it.  You can’t help it.  You are universally lovable, and the best of it is that you don’t know it.  You don’t know it now.  Even as I tell it to you, you don’t realize it, you won’t realize it—­and that very incapacity to realize it is one of the reasons why you are so loved.  You are incredulous now, and you shake your head; but I know, who am your slave, as all people know, for they likewise are your slaves.