ugh. The thought of a
disembodied intelligence was pathetic, depressing. But the thought of a
glorified soul was the hope of the world.

My wife, too, was in a penitent and rather exalted mood. During the
sermon she sat with her hand in mine, and I was conscious of peace and a
deep thankfulness. We had been married for many years, and we had grown
very close. Of what importance was the Wells case, or what mattered it
that there were strange new-old laws in the universe, so long as we kept
together?

That my wife had felt a certain bitterness toward Miss Jeremy, a
jealousy of her powers, even of her youth, had not dawned on me. But
when, in her new humility, she suggested that we call on the medium that
afternoon. I realized that, in her own way, she was making a sort of
atonement.

Miss Jeremy lived with an elderly spinster cousin, a short distance out
of town. It was a grim house, coldly and rigidly Calvinistic. It gave an
unpleasant impression at the start, and our comfort was not increased
by the discovery, made early in the call, that the cousin regarded the
Neighborhood Club and its members with suspicion.

The cousin--her name was Connell--was small and sharp, and she entered
the room followed by a train of cats. All the time she was frigidly
greeting us, cats were coming in at the door, one after the other. It
fascinated me. I do not like cats. I am, as a matter of confession,
afraid of cats. They affect me as do snakes. They trailed in in a
seemingly endless procession, and one of them took a fancy to me, and
leaped from behind on to my shoulder. The shock set me stammering.

"My cousin is out," said Miss Connell. "Doctor Sperry has taken her for
a ride. She will be back very soon."

I shook a cat from my trouser leg, and my wife made an unimportant
remark.

"I may as well tell you, I disapprove of what Alice is doing," said Miss
Connell. "She doesn't have to. I've offered her a good home. She was
brought up a Presbyterian. I call this sort of thing playing with the
powers of darkness. Only the eternally damned are doomed to walk the
earth. The blessed are at rest."

"But you believe in her powers, don't you?" my wife asked.

"I believe she can do extraordinary things. She saw my father's spirit
in this very room last night, and described him, although she had never
seen him."

As she had said that only the eternally damned were doomed to walk
the earth, I was tempted to comment on this stricture on