When I came back, the waiting-room for prospective crystal-gazers was empty, and Emmeline herself was just leaving it.

“What!” I exclaimed.  “All over?”

“Yes,” she said; “Sullivan has sent for me.  You see, of course, one has to mingle with one’s guests.  Only they’re really Sullivan’s guests.”

“And what about me?” I said.  “Am I not going to have a look into the crystal?”

I had, as a matter of fact, not the slightest interest in her crystal at that instant.  I regarded the crystal as a harmless distraction of hers, and I was being simply jocular when I made that remark.  Emmeline, however, took it seriously.  As her face had changed when she first saw me in the box at the Opera, and again to-night when she met me and Marie Deschamps on my arm, so once more it changed now.

“Do you really want to?” she questioned me, in her thrilling voice.

My soul said:  “It’s all rubbish—­but suppose there is something in it, after all?”

And I said aloud: 

“Yes.”

“Come, then.”

We passed through the room with the red Japanese lantern, and lo! the next room was perfectly dark save for an oval of white light which fell slantingly on a black marble table.  The effect was rather disconcerting at first; but the explanation was entirely simple.  The light came from an electric table-lamp (with a black cardboard shade arranged at an angle) which stood on the table.  As my eyes grew accustomed to the obscurity I discovered two chairs.

“Sit down,” said Emmeline.

And she and I each took one of the chairs, at opposite sides of the table.

Emmeline was magnificently attired.  As I looked at her in the dimness across the table, she drummed her fingers on the marble, and then she bent her face to glance within the shade of the lamp, and for a second her long and heavy, yet handsome, features were displayed to the minutest part in the blinding ray of the lamp, and the next second they were in obscurity again.  It was uncanny.  I was impressed; and all the superstition which, like a snake, lies hidden in the heart of every man, stirred vaguely and raised its head.

“Carl—­” Emmeline began, and paused.

The woman indubitably did affect me strangely.  Hers was a lonely soul, an unusual mixture of the absolutely conventional and of something quite else—­something bizarre, disturbing, and inexplicable.  I was conscious of a feeling of sympathy for her.

“Well?” I murmured.

“Do you believe in the supernatural?”

“I neither believe nor disbelieve,” I replied, “for I have never met with anything that might be a manifestation of it.  But I may say that I am not a hard and fast materialist.”  And I added:  “Do you believe in it?”

“Of course,” she snapped.

“Then, if you really believe, if it’s so serious to you, why do you make a show of it for triflers?”.