Richard Bransby looked after her sourly.

“Humph,” he said. “What a foolish woman.”

“Yes, silly,” Stephen agreed.

“So foolish she dares to believe—in things,” Horace Latham said slowly.

They all looked at him in amazement. “Latham!” Bransby exclaimed.

The physician turned and met his gaze. “Yes?”

“You don’t mean to tell me that you believe in all this hopeless drivel of ‘mediums’ and ‘control’ and spirit communications.”

“I don’t know,” Latham said musingly.

“Well, upon my word!”

“Of course,” Latham continued, “some of it—much of it—sounds incredible—beyond belief—and yet—well, some years ago wireless telegraphy, the telephone, a hundred other things that we have seen proved, would have seemed quite as incredible. With those things in mind, how can we absolutely deny this thing? How can we be sure that these people—foolish as some of them certainly appear—are not upon the threshold of a great truth?”

The hand that held the paper-weight tightened angrily. “And you, a sensible man, tell me that you believe that the spirits of those who have gone before us come back to earth, and spend their time knocking on walls, rocking tables, whirling banjos, and giving silly women silly answers to silly questions!”

“No—not that exactly.” Latham was smiling. “But my profession—it brings me very close to death—I’ve seen so much suffering lately. Well—if one believes in God—how can we believe that death is the end? I know I don’t.”

Helen’s hand lay on the table, she was standing near her father. He laid his palm on hers—and sat musing.

“No,” he said after a pause, “neither do I.”

“I’m sure it isn’t!” the girl said.

“This is getting a bit over my head,” Stephen Pryde said with a shrug, rising. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take a stroll.”

Latham looked at him with a smile of apprisement, “I take it you don’t share our belief, Pryde?”

Stephen smiled in return, and a little contemptuously.

“I am afraid I am what you would call a rank materialist. To me death is the end—complete annihilation. That’s why I mean to get everything I can out of life.”

“Oh, Stephen—no!” his cousin cried. “You mustn’t believe that! You can’t! Think! What becomes of the mind, the heart, the soul, the thing that makes us think, and love and hate and eat and move, quite aside from muscles and bones and veins? The thing that is we, and drives us, the very life of us?”

“Just what becomes of an aeroplane when it flies foul, or is killed, and comes crashing down to earth: done, killed, I tell you, just as much as a dead man is killed—and no more. Last week, near Hendon, I saw a biplane, a single seater, fighter, die. Something went wrong when she was high, going beautifully, she side-slipped abruptly to port, and trembled on her wing-tip just as I’ve seen a bird do a thousand times, and she sickened and staggered down to her doom, faint, torn and bleeding, twisted and moaned on the grass, gave a last convulsive groan, a last shudder, and then lay still, a huddled mass of oil, broken struts, smashed propeller, petrol dripping slowly from her shattered engine, her sectional veins bleeding, her rudder gone, her ailerons useless, forever, her landing-gear ruined: killed—dead—a corpse—for the rubbish heap.”

“Oh! Stephen,” whispered Helen, “and the pilot?”

“The pilot?” Pryde said indifferently. “Oh! he was dead too, of course.”

He picked up a fresh cigarette and sauntered from the room.

Of the injured and destroyed machine he had spoken with more emotion than any one of them had ever heard in his voice before. And there was a long pause before Bransby, turning again to Latham, said:

“I’m afraid I don’t quite follow your argument, Doctor. Surely one can believe in immortality without believing in spiritualism?”

“I don’t know that that is my argument. But lately one has thought a great deal over such things. The war has brought them very close to all of us.”

“Yes,” Bransby concurred thoughtfully. And Caroline Leavitt laid down her work a moment and echoed sadly, “Yes.”

And Latham continued: “Those lives that were given out there—so unselfishly—surely that cannot be the end—and, if we don’t really die, how can we be certain that the spiritual power—the driving force, that continues to exist, cannot come back and make its existence felt? Oh! I don’t mean in rocking tables, or ringing bells, or showing lights, or in ghostly manifestations at sÉances.”

“What do you mean, then?” Bransby was half fascinated, half annoyed.

“They might make an impression upon the consciousness of the living.”

But Bransby was unimpressed by that.

“A sort of supernatural telepathy, eh?”

Latham pondered a moment. “I dare say I can explain best by giving you an example.”

“Well?”

“Suppose a man—a man whose every instinct was just and generous—had done another man a great wrong and found it out too late. If his consciousness remained, isn’t it possible—isn’t it probable, that he would try to right that wrong and, since he had cast away all material things, he couldn’t communicate in the old way—yet he’d try—surely he would try——”

“You believe that?” Bransby exclaimed.

“I believe,” Latham said very slowly, “that he’d try—but whether he’d succeed or not—I don’t know.”

“Oh!” Helen cried with a rapt, glowing face, laying a pleading hand on the hand holding the jade, “it must be so—it’s beautiful to believe it is so.”

“And if,” Latham continued, “one would try for the sake of justice, can’t you think that others would try, because of the love they had for the living they had left behind—who still needed them? I dare say that every one of us has at one time or another been conscious of some impalpable thing near us—some of us have believed it was a spirit guarding us.”

“Yes,” Helen whispered.

“If we knew,” Latham went on, “the way, we might understand what they wanted to tell us—if only we knew the way——”

Again there was a pause. Bransby shifted impatiently, and put his toy down with a slight clatter, but kept his hand on it still.

Latham spoke, his manner completely changed. He got up, and he spoke, almost abruptly. “Well, I am afraid I have bored you people sufficiently for to-night, and I have some rather important letters to write—if you will excuse me.”

“Of course,” Helen said, as he moved to the door, “but oh! you haven’t bored us, Dr. Latham.”

Latham smiled at her. “Thanks. I’ll take my cigar,” he added, picking it up.

“I shan’t be able to enjoy seeing you enjoy it,” Bransby protested.

“Try telepathy,” was the smiling rejoinder. “Good-night.”