troubles me is an utterance about
myself that is supposed to have been made by a voice from the other
side. This came at the very end when Seraphine went into an entranced
condition again, with the lights up.

"I have a message for one who is tenderly loved by an exalted spirit,"
she said, sighing heavily, her eyes closed, "one who would come to her,
but there is a barrier. She can regain health and happiness if she will
cleanse her soul of evil. She must confess a sinful purpose that she
entertained in her heart on the night of June 14, 1914."

June 14, 1914! I looked up this date in my diary and find that it was
the occasion of Roberta Vallis' party when Seraphine made her prophecy
about me. Now I remember. We were considering what a woman can do to
satisfy her emotional nature if she has no chance to marry and longs for
the companionship of a man. I said, according to my diary, that "there
is a sacred right given by God to every woman who is born, a right that
not even God Himself can take away--" Then I was interrupted by
Seraphine and I did not tell them what that sacred right is or what use
I personally proposed to make of it.

But I knew and know still, and the question that distresses me is
whether an exalted spirit (could it be my mother?) really possesses this
knowledge of my wicked purpose--if it was wicked--or whether this is
simply a case of mind reading by Seraphine.

"_She can regain health and happiness if she will cleanse her soul of
evil--_" That was the message. Is it true? Is there evil in my heart?
Have I entertained a sinful purpose? Have I the courage to answer this
question truthfully, even in these secret pages--have I?

Yes, I will put down the truth and justify myself in my own eyes. Then I
will burn this book. I would die of shame if Christopher should ever
read this confession.

As my chief justification, I dwell upon the frightful wrong that my
husband did me when he took away my faith in men, my faith in their
ability or willingness to be true to one woman. He did this by his words
and by his acts. He assured me that sex desire in the male is so
resistless that, when conflict arises between this desire and the
teachings of religion, it is the latter which are almost invariably set
aside; with the result that great numbers of men, brought up as
Christians, either renounce Christianity (if they are honest) or find
themselves forced into a life of hypocritical compromise in regard to
s