And there was a change in the woman.  She no longer seemed small or insignificant.  Twenty years were gone from her age.  Her eyes were shining, a tinge of color had come into her sallow cheeks, her whole figure had expanded.  So I have seen a dull-eyed, listless lad change in an instant into briskness and life when given a task of which he felt himself master.  She looked down at Agatha with an expression which I resented from the bottom of my soul—­the expression with which a Roman empress might have looked at her kneeling slave.  Then with a quick, commanding gesture she tossed up her arms and swept them slowly down in front of her.

I was watching Agatha narrowly.  During three passes she seemed to be simply amused.  At the fourth I observed a slight glazing of her eyes, accompanied by some dilation of her pupils.  At the sixth there was a momentary rigor.  At the seventh her lids began to droop.  At the tenth her eyes were closed, and her breathing was slower and fuller than usual.  I tried as I watched to preserve my scientific calm, but a foolish, causeless agitation convulsed me.  I trust that I hid it, but I felt as a child feels in the dark.  I could not have believed that I was still open to such weakness.

“She is in the trance,” said Miss Penclosa.

“She is sleeping!” I cried.

“Wake her, then!”

I pulled her by the arm and shouted in her ear.  She might have been dead for all the impression that I could make.  Her body was there on the velvet chair.  Her organs were acting—­her heart, her lungs.  But her soul!  It had slipped from beyond our ken.  Whither had it gone?  What power had dispossessed it?  I was puzzled and disconcerted.

“So much for the mesmeric sleep,” said Miss Penclosa.  “As regards suggestion, whatever I may suggest Miss Marden will infallibly do, whether it be now or after she has awakened from her trance.  Do you demand proof of it?”

“Certainly,” said I.

“You shall have it.”  I saw a smile pass over her face, as though an amusing thought had struck her.  She stooped and whispered earnestly into her subject’s ear.  Agatha, who had been so deaf to me, nodded her head as she listened.

“Awake!” cried Miss Penclosa, with a sharp tap of her crutch upon the floor.  The eyes opened, the glazing cleared slowly away, and the soul looked out once more after its strange eclipse.

We went away early.  Agatha was none the worse for her strange excursion, but I was nervous and unstrung, unable to listen to or answer the stream of comments which Wilson was pouring out for my benefit.  As I bade her good-night Miss Penclosa slipped a piece of paper into my hand.

“Pray forgive me,” said she, “if I take means to overcome your scepticism.  Open this note at ten o’clock to-morrow morning.  It is a little private test.”

I can’t imagine what she means, but there is the note, and it shall be opened as she directs.  My head is aching, and I have written enough for to-night.  To-morrow I dare say that what seems so inexplicable will take quite another complexion.  I shall not surrender my convictions without a struggle.