l of the women sitting near me looked at me and beamed their
approval. One of the husbands scowled at me.

"I can tell by your tone," the Swami said, and apparently he hadn't
recognized my tone, "that you have forgiven him. That is the message. He
wants you to know that he is happy. He is much wiser now. He knows now
that he was wrong."

One of the women reached over and patted me on the shoulder, giving me
motherly encouragement.

But the Swami had no more messages for men. He was smart enough to know
where to stop. He'd tried one of the simplest come-ons, and there had
been too much of a pause. It had almost not come off.

I wondered who good old Bob Smith was? Surely, among the thousands of
applicants I'd interviewed, there must have been a number of them. And,
being applicants, of course some of them had been wrong.

The Swami's tones, giving one message after another--faster and faster
now, not waiting for acknowledgment or confirmation--began to sink into
a whisper. His speech became ragged, heavy. The words became
indistinguishable. About his head there began to float a pale,
luminescent sphere. There was a subdued gasp from the audience and then
complete stillness. As though, unbreathing, in the depths of a tomb,
they watched the sphere. It bobbed about, over the Swami's head and
around him. At times it seemed as if about to float off stage, but it
came back. It swirled out over the audience, but not too far, and never
at such an angle that the long, flexible dull black wire supporting it
would be silhouetted against the glowing crystal ball.

Then it happened. There was a gasp, a smothered scream. And over at one
side of the auditorium a dark object began bobbing about in the air up
near the ceiling. It swerved and swooped. The Swami's luminescent sphere
jerked to a sudden stop. The Swami sat with open mouth and stared at the
dark object which he was not controlling.

The dark object was not confined to any dull black wire. It went where
it willed. It went too high and brushed against the ceiling.

There was a sudden shower of coins to the floor. A compact hit the floor
with a flat spat. A handkerchief floated down more slowly.

"My purse!" a woman gasped. I recognized my interviewer's voice. Her
purse contained two Auerbach cylinders, and they were having themselves
a ball.

In alarm, I looked quickly at the stage, hoping the Swami wasn't astute
enough to catch on. But he was gone. The audience, wat