But Mr. May had not finished.  He proceeded to the immediate point.

“Shall it be denied that devils have been cast out in the name of God?” he asked.  “And if from human tenements, then why not from dwellings made with human hands also?  May not a house be similarly cleansed as well as a soul?  This unknown spirit—­angel or fiend, or other sentient being—­is permitted to challenge mankind and draw attention to its existence.  A mystery, I grant, but its Maker has now willed that some measure of this mystery shall be revealed to us.  We are called to play our part in this spirit’s existence.

“It would seem that it has endured a sort of imprisonment in this particular room for more years than we know, and it may actually be the spirit of some departed human being condemned, for causes that humanity has forgotten, to remain within these walls.  The nameless and unknown thing cries passionately to be liberated, and is permitted by its Maker to draw our terrified attention upon itself by the exercise of destructive functions transcending our reason.

“God, then, has willed that, through the agency of devout and living men, the unhappy phantom shall now be translated and moved from this environment for ever; and to me the appointed task is allotted.  So I believe, as firmly as I believe in the death and resurrection of the Lord.  Is that clear to you, Sir Walter?”

“It is.  You have made it convincingly clear.”

“So be it, then.  I, too, Mary, am not dead to the meaning of science in its proper place.  We may take an illustration of what I have told you from astronomy.  As comets enter our system from realms of which we have no knowledge, dazzle us a little, awaken our speculations and then depart, so may certain immortal spirits also be supposed to act.  We entangle them possibly in our gross air and detain them for centuries, or moments, until their Creator’s purpose in sending them is accomplished.  Then He takes the means to liberate them and set them on their eternal roads and to their eternal tasks once more.”

The listening woman, almost against her reason, felt herself beginning to share these assumptions.  But that they were fantastic, unsupported by any human knowledge, and would presently involve an experiment full of awful peril to the life of the man who uttered them, she also perceived.  Yet her reasonable caution and conventional distrust began to give way a little under the priest’s magnetic voice, his flaming eyes, his positive and triumphant certainty of truth.  He burned with his inspiration, and she felt herself powerless to oppose any argument founded on facts against the mystic enthusiasm of such religious faith.  His honesty and fervor could not, however, abate Mary’s acute fear.  Her father had entirely gone over to the side of the devotee and she knew it.

“It is well we have your opportunity to-night,” he said, “for had the police arrived, out of their ignorance they might deny it to you.”