him, and exhorted him to have faith in a life to come; the little sister of another revealed that she could never tell the beauty of the spirit-land; a lady cried out, "Oh, John, is that you kissing me?" to which a hollow whisper answered, "Yes; persevere, and all will be well." Suddenly a sharp smack was heard, and another lady, whose chubbiness had no doubt commended her as a medium for this sort of communication, exclaimed, with a hysterical laugh, "Oh, here's Jim, again! He's slapping me on the shoulder!" and in another instant this frolic ghost had passed round the circle, slapping shoulders and knees in the absolute darkness with amazing precision.
Jim went as suddenly as he came, and then there was a lull in the demonstrations. They began again with the voices, amidst which was heard the rhythmic clapping of hands, as Egeria beat her palms together, to prove that she had no material agency in the feats performed. Then, one of the circle called out, "Oh, delicious! Somebody is pressing a perfumed handkerchief to my face!" "And mine!" "And mine!" came quickly from others.
"Be careful," warned the small voice of Mrs. Le Roy, "not to break the circle now, or someone will get hurt."
She had scarcely spoken, when there came a shriek of pain and terror, with the muffled noise of a struggle; then a fainter cry, and a fall to the floor.
All sprang to their feet in confusion.
"Egeria! Egeria!" shouted Dr. Boynton.
The girl made no answer. "Oh, light the gas, light the gas!" he entreated; and now the crowning wonder of the seance appeared. A hand of bluish flame shone in the air, and was seen to hover near one of the gas-burners, which it touched; as the gas flashed up and the hand vanished, a groan of admiration burst forth, which was hardly checked by the spectacle that the strong light revealed.
Egeria lay stretched along the floor in a swoon, the masses of her yellow hair disordered and tossed about her pale face. Her arms were flung outward, and the hand on which she wore her ring showed a stain of blood, oozing from a cut in a finger next the ring; the hand must have been caught in a savage clutch, and the sharp point of the setting crushed into the tender flesh.
Ford was already on his knees beside the girl, over whose insensible face he bowed himself to lift her fallen head.
"I told you," said Mrs. Le Roy, "that someone would get hurt if anybody broke the circle."
"It has been a glorious time!" cried Dr. Boynton, with sparkling eyes, while he went about shaking hands with one and another.
"It has surpassed my utmost hopes! We stand upon the verge of a great era! The whole history of supernaturalism shows nothing like it! The key to the mystery is found!"
The company thronged eagerly about him, some to ask what the key was, others to talk of the wonderful hand. Egeria was forgotten; she might have been trodden under foot but for the active efforts of Hatch, who cleared a circle about her, and at last managed to withdraw the doctor from his auditors and secure his attention for the young girl.
"Oh, a faint, a mere faint," he said, as he bent over her and touched her pulse. "The facts established are richly worth all they have cost. Ah!" he added, "we must have air to revive her."
"You won't get it in this crowd!" said Hatch, looking savagely round.
"We had better carry her to her room," said Mrs. Le Roy.
"Yes, yes; very good, very good!" cried the doctor, absently trying to gather the languid shape into his arms. He presently desisted, and turned again to the group which Hatch had forced aside, and began to talk of the luminous hand and its points of difference from the hands shown in the box.
Hatch glanced round after him in despair, and then, with a look at Ford, said, "We must manage it somehow." He bent over the inanimate girl, and with consummate reverence and delicacy drew her into his arms, and made some steps toward the door.
"It won't do; you're too little, Mr. Hatch," said Mrs. Le Roy, with brutal common sense. "You never could carry her up them stairs in the world. Give her to the other gentleman, and go and fetch Dr. Boynton, if you can ever get him away."
Hatch hesitated a moment, and with another look at Ford surrendered his burden to him. Ford received it as reverently as the other had given it; the beautiful face lay white upon his shoulder; the long, bright, disheveled hair fell over his arm; in his strong clasp he lifted her as lightly as if she had been indeed some pale phantom.
Phillips, standing aloof from the other group and intent upon this tableau, was able to describe it very effectively, a few evenings afterwards, to a lady who knew both himself and Ford well enough to enjoy it.
II.
MR. PHILLIPS'S father had been in business on that obscure line which divides the wholesale merchant's social acceptability from the lost condition of the retail dealer.
When he died, however, his son emerged forever from the social twilight in which the father had been content to remain. He took account of his means, and found that he had enough to live handsomely upon, not only without anything like shop-keeping, but without business of any sort, and he courageously resolved to be a man of leisure. He had certain tastes which qualified him for this life; he had read much, and he had travelled abroad. He joined a club convenient to the lodging which he kept in his paternal home, letting out the rest of the house to a thrifty woman whose interest it was that he should have nothing to complain of. Every morning, at nine precisely, he breakfasted at the club, beside one of the pleasantest windows; the sun came in there in the afternoon, and except in the winter months he dined at another table. His breakfast and his dinner were the chief events of a day which he had the wisdom to keep as like every other day as he could, unless for some very good reason. When he had finished either meal, he turned over the newspapers and magazines, largely English, in the reading-room; after dinner he often dozed a few minutes in his chair. For the rest, he paid visits and went about to the picture stores and to the studios. Now and then he bought a painting, which in his hands turned out a good investment; but his passion was bric-a-brac, and he liked the excitement of the auction-room, where he picked up from time to time a rug, a queer vase, a colonial clock, a claw-footed table or chest of drawers, and added them to his stores.
He kept up with the current literature, and distilled from it a polite essence, with which he knew how to perfume his conversation in the measure agreeable to ladies willing to learn what it was distinguished to read. With many he was an authority in such matters, and with nearly all he was acceptable for a certain freshness of the susceptibilities, which he studiously preserved, growing them under glass, as it were, when it was past their natural seasons to flourish in the open air. Now and then one revolted against this artificial bloom, and declared that Mr. Phillips's emotions smelt of the watering-pot; but commonly they were well liked by the sex with which, even if he had not preferred, he would have been forced mainly to associate. There is no society but that of women for an idler in our country; the other men are busy and tired, with little patience and little sympathy for men who are not busy and tired.
Such men as Phillips consorted with were of the feminine temperament, like artists and musicians (he had a pretty taste in music); or else they were of the intensely masculine sort, like Ford, to whom he had attached himself. He liked to have their queer intimacy noted, and to talk of it with the ladies of his circle, finding it as much of a mystery as he could. At these times he treated his friend as a bit of vertu, telling, at what length his lovely listener would, of how he had happened to pick Ford up. He bore much from him in the way of contemptuous sarcasm; it illustrated the strange fascination which such a man as Ford had for such a man as Phillips. He lay in wait for his friend's characteristics, and
