actory, the door opened,
and Vanderlyn was admitted, by a young _bonne a tout faire_, into a hall
filled with a strong smell of cooking, a smell that made it clear that
Madame d'Elphis and her family--her _smalah_, as Jacques de Lera had
called them--had the true Southern love of garlic.

Without asking his name or business, the servant showed him straight
into a square, gold-and-white salon. Standing there, forgetful for a
moment of his distasteful errand, Vanderlyn looked about him with
mingled contempt and disgust, for his eyes, trained to observe, had at
once become aware that the note of this room was showy vulgarity. The
furniture was a mixture of imitation Louis XV. and sham Empire. On the
woven tapestry sofa lay a child's toy, once costly, but now broken.

How amazing the fact that here, amid these pretentiously ugly and
commonplace surroundings, innumerable human beings had stood, and would
stand, trembling with fear, suspense, and hope! Vanderlyn reminded
himself that here also Tom Pargeter, a man accustomed to measure
everything by the money standard, had waited many a time in the sure
belief that this was the ante-chamber to august and awe-inspiring
mysteries; here, all unknowing of what the future held, he would come
to-morrow morning, to learn, for once, the truth--the terrible
truth--from the charlatan to whom he, poor fool, pinned his faith.

Suddenly a door opened, and Vanderlyn turned round with eager curiosity,
a curiosity which became merged in astonishment. The woman advancing
towards him made her vulgar surroundings sink into blurred
insignificance; for Madame d'Elphis, with her slight, sinuous figure,
draped in a red peplum, her pale face lit by dark tragic eyes, looked
the sybil to the life....

Vanderlyn bowed, with voluntary deference. "Monsieur," she said, in a
low, deep voice, "I must ask you to follow me; this is my sister's
_appartement_. I live next door."

She preceding him, they walked through an untidy dining-room of which
the furniture--the sham Renaissance chairs and walnut-wood
buffet--looked strangely alien to Vanderlyn's guide, into a short,
ill-lighted passage, which terminated in a locked, handleless door.

The woman whom he now knew to be Madame d'Elphis turned, and, facing
Vanderlyn, for the first time allowed her melancholy eyes to rest full
on her unknown visitor.

"You have your stick, your hat?" she asked. "Yes?--that is well; for
when our seance is over, you will l