ill effects, I hope, from what happened at Lady
Laura's?"

"Not at all, after the first shock."

"Doesn't that reassure you at all, Mr. Baxter?"

Laurie hesitated.

"It's like this," he said; "I'm not really convinced. I don't see
anything final in what happened."

"Will you explain, please?"

Laurie set the results of his meditations forth at length. There was
nothing, he said, that could not be accounted for by a very abnormal
state of subjectivity. The fact that this ... this young person's name
was in his mind ... and so forth....

"... And I find it rather distracting to my work," he ended. "Please
don't think me rude or ungrateful, Mr. Vincent."

He thought he was being very strong and sensible.

The medium was silent for a moment.

"Doesn't it strike you as odd that I myself was able to get no results
that night?" he said presently.

"How? I don't understand."

"Why, as a rule, I find no difficulty at all in getting some sort of
response by automatic handwriting. Are you aware that I could do
nothing at all that night?"

Laurie considered it.

"Well," he said at last, "this may sound very foolish to you; but
granting that I have got unusual gifts that way--they are your own
words, Mr. Vincent--if that is so, I don't see why my own
concentration of thought, or hypnotic sleep or trance or whatever it
was--might not have been so intense as to--"

"I quite see," interrupted the other. "That is, of course, conceivable
from your point of view. It had occurred to me that you might think
that.... Then I take it that your theory is that the subconscious self
is sufficient to account for it all--that in this hypnotic sleep, if
you care to call it so, you simply uttered what was in your heart, and
identified yourself with ... with your memory of that young girl."

"I suppose so," said Laurie shortly.

"And the rapping, loud, continuous, unmistakable?"

"That doesn't seem to me important. I did not actually hear it, you
know."

"Then what you need is some unmistakable sign?"

"Yes ... but I see perfectly that this is impossible. Whatever I said
in my sleep, either I can't identify it as true, in which case it is
worthless as evidence, or I can identify it, because I already know
it, and in that case it is worthless again."

The medium smiled, half closing his eyes.

"You must think us very childish, Mr. Baxter," he said.

He sat up a little in his chair; then, putting his hand into his
breast