“Is it possible to do otherwise?  How can you, of all men, ask?  Science has spoken—­or, rather, science has been struck dumb.  No natural, physical force is responsible for his end.  He died without any cause that you could discover.  This is no new thing, however.  History records that men have passed similarly under visitations beyond human power to explain.  If the Lord could slay multitudes in a night at a breath, as we know from the pages of the Old Testament, then it is certain He can still end the life of any man at any moment, and send His messengers to do so.  I believe in good and evil spirits as I believe in my Bible, and I know that, strong and terrible though they may be and gifted with capital powers against our flesh, yet the will of God is stronger than the strongest of them.  These things, I say, have happened before.  They are sent to try our faith.  I do not mourn my son, save with the blind, natural pang of paternity, because I know that he has been withdrawn from this world for higher purposes in another; but the means of his going I demand to investigate, because they may signify much more than his death itself.  One reason for his death may be this:  that we are now called to understand what is hidden in the Grey Room.  My son’s death may have been necessary to that explanation.  Human intervention may be demanded there.  One of God’s immortal souls, for reasons we cannot tell, may be chained in that room, waiting its liberation at human hands.  We are challenged, and I accept the challenge, being impelled thereto by the sacred message that has been put into my heart.”

Even his fellow-priest stared in bewilderment at Septimus May’s extraordinary opinions, while to the physician this was the chatter of a lunatic.

“I will take my Bible into that haunted room to-night,” concluded the clergyman, “and I will pray to God, Who sits above both quick and dead, to protect me, guide me, and lead me to my duty.”

Sir Walter spoke.

“You flout reason when you say these things, my dear May.”

“And why should I not flout reason?  What Christian but knows well enough that reason is the staff that breaks in our hands and wounds us?  Much of our most vital experience has no part nor lot with reason.  A thousand things happen in the soul’s history which reason cannot account for.  A thousand moods, temptations, incitements prompt us to action or deter us from it—­urge us to do or avoid—­for which reason is not responsible.  Reason, if we bring these emotions to it, cannot even pronounce upon them.  Yet in them and from them springs the life of the soul and the conviction of immortality.  ’To act on impulse’—­who but daily realizes that commonplace in his own experience?  The mind does not only play tricks and laugh at reason in dreams while we sleep.  It laughs at reason while we wake, and the sanest spirit experiences inspired moments, mad moments, unaccountable impulses the reason for which he knows not.  The ancients explained these as temptations of malicious and malignant spirits or promptings from unseen beings who wish man well.  And where the urge is to evil, that may well be the truth; and where it is to good, who can doubt whence the inspiration comes?”