“I don’t know quite how to tell you this next.  It came on the way back from India.  She had gone there—­but perhaps you won’t be interested to know why she went.  Though I was more than twenty, I’d never had what you might call a flirtation.  I’d been kept by the Guides away from men—­as I’d once been kept from other children.  There was a young Englishman on the steamer.  And I liked him.”

Blake gave a sudden start, and rose automatically.  So this confidence led to another man—­that was the obstacle!  She seemed to catch his thought.

“Oh, not that!” she cried; “he was only an incident—­won’t you hear me?” Blake dropped at her feet again.

“But I liked him, though never any more—­he was a friend and girls need to play.  But he wanted to be more than a friend.  Aunt Paula passed us on the deck one evening.  After I had gone to bed, she came into my stateroom.  When the power is in her, I know it—­and I never saw it so strong as that night.  It shone out of her.  But that wasn’t the strange thing.  Only twice before, had I heard the voices speak from her mouth—­mostly, she used to tell me what they said to her.  But it was not Aunt Paula talking then—­it was Martha, her first and best control.  Shall I tell you all she said?”

Out of the confused impulses running through Dr. Blake, his sense of humor spurted a moment to the fore.  He found himself struggling to keep back a smile at the picture of some fat old woman in a dressing gown simulating hysteria that she might ruin a love affair.  He was hard put to make his voice sound sincere, as he answered: 

“Yes, all.”

“She said:  ’Child, you are more influenced by this man than you know.  It is not the great love, but it is dangerous.  You are to be the great Light only after you have put aside a great earthly love.  This vessel from which I am speaking’—­she meant Aunt Paula of course—­’yielded to an earthly love.  That is why she is less than you will be.  Would you imperil truth?’ It was something like that, only more.  Ah, do you see now?”

“I see,” said his sense of humor, “that your Aunt Paula is a most unlimited fakir.”

“I see,” said his voice, “but do you believe it?”

“I’ve so much cause to believe that I can never tell you all.  After Aunt Paula came out of it, I told her what Martha had said.  She was dear and sympathetic.  She put me to sleep; and when I woke, I was resigned.  I did not see him alone again.  Now I understand more clearly.  When I have had that earthly love and put it aside, when I have proved myself to my Guides—­then the voices will come to me.  Martha has repeated it to Aunt Paula whenever I have gone away from home.  She repeated it before I came up here—­”

“They had cause to repeat it,” he took her up fiercely; “cause to repeat it!”

“I—­I’m afraid so.  But how should I know?  I looked at you—­and it seemed right, everlastingly right, that I should know you.  And then I did—­so suddenly and easily that it made me shudder afterwards for fear the test had come—­the agony which I have been afraid to face.  Ah, it’s bold saying this!” She drooped forward, and her porcelain skin turned to rose.