"but her trouble is of the heart, the
result of the nervous crises which a trance medium is necessarily subject
to, and a disease of the heart may at any time take an unexpected turn."

"Has she the best advice?" asked Paul. "Excuse me; but if she has not,
and if her pecuniary means do not enable her to afford it, I beg you will
let me secure it for her."

Dr. Hull thanked him, but said that he was a physician himself, and that,
on account of his acquaintance with her constitutional peculiarities,
Mrs. Legrand considered him, and he considered himself, better able to
treat her than any strange physician. "You seem to be very much
interested in her case," added the doctor, with a slight intonation of
surprise.

"Can you wonder?" replied Paul. "Is she not door-keeper between this
world and the world of spirits where my love is? Don't think me brutal if
I confess to you that what I think of most is that her death might close
that door."

"I do not think you brutal," replied Dr. Hull; "what you feel is very
natural."

"Is it not strange--is it not hard to bear," cried Paul, giving way to
his feelings, "that the key of the gate between the world of spirits and
of men should be intrusted to a weak and sickly woman?"

"It is hard to bear, no doubt," replied Dr. Hull; "but it is not strange.
It is in accordance with the laws by which this world has always been
conducted. From the beginning has not the power of calling spirits out of
the unknown into this earth life been intrusted to weak and sickly women?
What the world loosely calls spiritualism is no isolated phenomenon or
set of phenomena. The universe is spiritual. Much as we claim for our
mediums, the mediumship of motherhood is far more marvellous. Our mediums
can enable spirits already alive, and able by their own wills to
cooperate, to pass before our eyes for a moment. To hold them longer in
our view exceeds their power. But these other women, these mothers, call
souls out of nothingness, and clothe them with bodies, so that they
speak, walk, work, love, and hate, some forty, some fifty, some seventy
years."

"You are right," said Paul bowing his head. "It is not strange though it
is hard to bear."

The effect of the seance at Mrs. Legrand's upon Miss Ludington had been
far less disturbing than upon Paul. To her it had been a lofty spiritual
consolation, setting the seal of absolute assurance upon a faith that had
been before too great, too strange, too beaut