“What do you think of it, doctor?”

“Of what part of it?”

“Of any part.  Do you attach any importance to it?”

“I do, certainly.”

“I thought you would laugh at the whole thing.”

“Why should I?  Why should I laugh at any circumstances which strongly affect men whom I know, or, indeed, any men?”

“But then, tell me, do you believe in some strange, unseen agency?  Do you believe that Julian absolutely held the hand of some being dwelling in another sphere, some being attracted to us, or, say, enabled to come to us by such an action as our sitting at a table in the dark?”

“No.  I don’t believe that.”

“You attribute the whole thing to bodily causes?”

“I am inclined to attribute it to the action and reaction of mind and body, undoubtedly.  If you had sat in the light, for instance, I don’t think Addison would have felt that hand.  The hand is indeed the least of the circumstances you have related, in my opinion.  The incidents of the dog and of the curtain are far more mysterious.  You are positive the door was securely shut?”

“Quite positive.”

“Could you, after having drawn the curtain, have allowed your hand to slip slightly back, pulling the curtain with it?”

“I don’t think so.  I feel sure not.”

“You know we all constantly make involuntary motions—­motions that our minds are quite unaware of.”

“I do feel sure, nevertheless.  And the dog?  What do you say to that?”

“I don’t know what to say.  But dogs are extraordinarily sensitive.  I do not think it beyond the bounds of possibility that the tumult of your nerves—­for there was tumult; you confess it—­communicated itself to him.”

“And was the cause of his conduct?”

“Yes.  In the course of my career I have been consulted by a great many patients whose nervous systems have been disastrously upset by the practices you describe, by so-called spiritualism, table-turning, and so forth.  One man I knew, trying to cultivate himself onto what he called ‘a higher plane,’ cultivated himself into a lunatic asylum, where he still remains.”

“Then you consider spiritualism—?”

“I have too much respect for the soul, too much belief in its great destiny, Cresswell, to juggle with it, or to play tricks with it.  When one meets a genius one does not want to have a game at puss-in-the-corner with him.  One is rather anxious to hear him talk seriously and display his mind.  When I come into contact with a soul, I don’t want to try to detach it from the home in which a divine power has placed it for a time.  I glory in many limitations against which it is the prevailing fashion to fight uselessly.  The soul can do all its work where it is—­in the body.  The influence you exercise over your friend Addison convinces me of the existence of spirits, things which will eventually be freed from the body, more certainly than any amount of material manifestations, sights, sounds, apparent physical sensations.  Why should we not be satisfied with remaining, for a time, as we are?  I consider that you and Addison were ill-advised in making this—­no doubt absurd—­experiment.  Supposing it to be absurd, the raison d’être of the sittings is gone at once.  Supposing it not to be—­”