“Is she asleep?” asked Matilde.

“She is in a trance,” the voice replied.  “I speak through her, but when she awakes, she will not know what I have said.  The spirits come to her directly sometimes, when she is awake, and they torment her.  Bosio has been coming to her often, and has made her suffer, until she wrote to you.  The spirits themselves suffer when they wish to communicate with the living, and cannot.”

“What are you?” inquired Matilda.

“I am Giuditta’s familiar.  The spirits generally speak, through me, to her, when she is in the trance.”

“And she knows nothing of what you say?”

“Nothing, after she is awake.”

“Is Bosio suffering now?” asked Matilde, gravely but eagerly, after a moment’s pause.

“I will ask him.”  And another brief pause followed.  “Yes,” continued the voice.  “He is suffering because he has left you.  He suffers remorse.  He cannot be happy unless he can communicate with you.”

“Can you see him?  Can you see his face?”

“Yes,” replied the voice, without hesitation.  “He is very pale.  His hair is soft, brown, and silky, with a few grey streaks in it.  His eyes are gentle and tender, and his beard is like his hair, soft and like silk.  He is as you last saw him alive, when you kissed him by the fireplace in the room that is yellow, just before he died.  He loves you, as he did then.”

Such evidence of unnatural knowledge might have convinced a more sceptical mind than Matilde’s of the fact that the somnambulist could at least read her thoughts and memories from her mind as from a book.  It was impossible that any one but herself could know how, and in what room, she had kissed him for the last time, a few minutes before his end.  Again the cold shiver ran under her hair, and she could not speak again for a few moments.

“Does he know what I am going to do to-day?” she asked at last, in a very low voice.

“I will ask him.”

The silence which followed was the longest of all that there had been.

“I cannot see him any more,” said the voice, speaking more faintly.  “He is gone.  He will communicate with you again.  I cannot find him.  Giuditta is tired—­she will—­” The last words were hardly audible, and the voice died away altogether.

In the dark, Matilde heard something like a yawn, as of a person waking from sleep.  Then Giuditta’s croaking voice spoke to her.

“I am tired,” she said.  “The spirits have kept me a long time.  Did you hear anything that you wished to hear?”

“Yes.  I heard much.”

While Matilde was speaking, the woman drew the curtain back, and the dull steel light of the gloomy day filled the small room.  But after the darkness it was almost dazzling.  Matilde looked at Giuditta’s face, and saw the same staring, china eyes, and the same listless expression in the unhealthy features.  She had felt a sensation of relief when the voice had been unable to answer the last question she had asked; for she still thought that there might be a doubt as to Giuditta’s total forgetfulness on waking.  But that doubt was greatly diminished by the woman’s indifferent and weary look.