“Are you serious, or only—?”

“Am I serious?” she cried, with a wild laugh; “you ask this?  The time has at last come for an explanation.  I would willingly have spared you, but it is in vain that we seek to avoid our fate!  Rest here!” and seizing my wrist, she dragged me down on the fallen trunk of a tree that lay half hidden by the tall grass at the side of the path.  Immediately behind us was a gloomy wood, choked with rank autumnal growths.  A more dank, unwholesome situation for a seat on a wet day it would be impossible to conceive.  But I preferred running the risk of rheumatic fever to contradicting Miss Latouche in her present mood.  Only I hoped the explanation would be exceedingly brief.

“You pretend that you never saw me before the other evening?” she began, feverishly.

“Certainly!” I answered, with great astonishment.  “It was undoubtedly our first meeting.  I am sure—­”

“Can you swear it?” she interrupted, eagerly.

“Oh, no!  I never swear!  But I don’t mind affirming,” I said playfully, hoping to give a less serious turn to the conversation.

To my horror Miss Latouche wrung her hands with the same expression of hopeless suffering that I had seen once before.

“It is too cruel,” she moaned, “after all this dreary waiting and watching, to be met like this!  Oh, my Beloved!  I cannot bear it any longer!  Shall I never find you?  Never! never!”

Her voice died away with a sob of despair, which effectually quenched my capacity for making jokes.

“I hardly understand what you are alluding to,” I said as nicely as I could; “but if you will trust me, I promise to do anything that lies in my power to help you.”

“You promise!” she exclaimed, eagerly.  “Mind, you are bound now!  Bound to my service!”

This was taking my polite offer of assistance rather more seriously than I intended.  Muttering some commonplace compliment, I begged to be further enlightened.

“You will not repeat to any living soul the mysteries I am about to disclose?” she began.  “No, I need not ask!  There is already sufficient sympathy between us for me to be sure of your discretion.  But remember, if you ever feel tempted to disclose a single word of these hidden matters, there are Unseen Powers who will amply avenge the profanation.  Know, then, that since my Beloved was snatched from me by what dull men call death, all my faculties have been concentrated on the effort to discover some link of communication with the Invisible World.  I will not dwell on my toils and sufferings, the terrible sights I have braved and the sleepless nights that I have sacrificed to study.  I do not grudge my youth, passed as it were under the shadow of the tomb, for at last the truth has been revealed to me. You are to be the medium!”

“Oh, nonsense!” I shouted.  “I won’t undertake it!  Nothing shall persuade me!  Besides, I am perfectly ignorant of the subject.”