er friend's hands.
"No!" she cried. "Do not say such things! Never! Never! I am all hers! I
belong to Maria alone!" Ester could not answer, for at that point the
smiling professor came bustling into the room.

He saw that his wife's eyes were wet with tears and that Luisa was
greatly excited. He greeted her very quietly and sat down in silence
beside Ester, in the belief that they had been discussing the usual
subject, which was so painful to his wife. She would have liked to send
him away and resume her conversation with Luisa, but did not venture to
do so. Luisa was shuddering at that spectre of future danger which would
sometimes stand vaguely outlined before her mind's eye, but which she
had always banished with horror, never pausing to examine it, and which
now, evoked by her friend's words, rose before her, naked and distinct.
After a long and painful silence Ester sighed, and said in a low voice:

"You may go if you like. Go, both of you."

Luisa, moved by an impulse of gratitude, fell on her knees before her
friend and buried her face in her lap. "You know," she said, "I no
longer believe in God. At first I thought there must be a cruel God, but
now I do not believe in the existence of any God. But if a loving God,
such as He in whom you believe, did really, surely exist, He would not
condemn a poor mother who has lost her only child, and who is
struggling to persuade herself that a part of that child still lives!"

Ester made no reply. Almost every night for two years Luisa and her
husband had evoked the spirit of the dead child. Professor Gilardoni, in
whom there was a strange mingling of the free-thinker and the mystic,
had read with great interest the marvellous tales that were told
concerning the Fox sisters--Americans--and the experiments of Eliphas
Levi, and had closely followed the spiritualistic movement which had
spread rapidly in Europe, in the form of a mania that upset both heads
and tables. He had spoken to Luisa about this movement, and Luisa,
possessed and blinded by the idea that she might ascertain if her child
did still exist, in which case she might in some way be able to
communicate with her, seeing nothing else in all the marvellous facts
and strange theories save this one luminous point, had besought him to
make some experiments with Ester and herself. Ester believed in nothing
supernatural outside the doctrines of Christianity, and did not,
therefore, take the matter seriously. She wil