Annette. "In spite of what I'm going to tell you, I never saw but once the thing they call a medium. That was years ago—but the horrible sacrilege of it has never left me. She had a part of truth, and she was desecrating it by guesses and catch words—selling it for money! Aunt Paula is broader than I. 'It's part of the truth,' she said, 'that woman is desecrating the work, but she's serving in her way.' I suppose so—but since then I've never liked to hear Aunt Paula called a medium."

She paused a second on this.

"If I were only sure of your sympathy!" A note of pleading fluttered in her voice.

"No thought of yours, however I regard it, but is sure of my sympathy—because it's yours," he answered.

As though she had not heard, she went on.

"I was an orphan. I never knew my father and mother. The first things I remember are of the country—perhaps that is why I love the out-of-doors—the sky through my window, filled with huge, puffy, ice-cream clouds, a little new-born pig that somebody put in my bed one morning—daisy-fields like snow—and the darling peep-peep-peep of little bunches of yellow down that I was always trying to catch and never succeeding. I couldn't say chicken. I always said shicken" She paused. With that tenderness which every woman entertains for her own little girlhood, she smiled.

"I've told you of the five white birches. I was looking at them and naming them on my fingers the day that Aunt Paula came. My childhood ended there. I seemed to grow up all at once."

Blake muttered something inarticulate. But at her look of inquiry, he merely said. "Go on!"

"She isn't really my aunt by blood,—Aunt Paula isn't. You understand—my father and her husband were brothers. They all died—everybody died but just Aunt Paula and me. So she took me away with her. And after that it was always the dreadful noise and confusion of New York, with only my one doll—black Dinah—a rag-baby. I thought," she interrupted herself wistfully, "I'd send Dinah to you when I got back to New York. Would you like her?"

"Like her—like her! My—my—" But he swallowed his words. "Go on!" He commanded again.

"Afterwards came London and then India. Such education as I had, I got from governesses. I didn't have very much as girls go in my—in my class. I didn't understand that then, any more than I understand why I wasn't allowed to go to school or to play with other girls. There was a time when I rebelled frightfully at that. I can tell definitely just when it began. We were passing a convent in the Bronx, and it was recess time. The sisters in their starched caps were sewing over by the fence, and the girls were playing—a ring game, 'Go in and out the window'—I can hear it now. I crowded my little face against the pickets to watch, and two little girls who weren't in the game passed close to me. The nearest one—I 'm sure I'd know her now if I saw her grown up. She was of about my own age, very dark, with the silkiest black hair and the longest black eyelashes that I ever saw. She had a dimple at one corner of her mouth. She wore on her arm a little bracelet with a gold heart dangling from it. I wasn't allowed any jewelry; and it came into my mind that I'd like a gold bracelet like that, before it came that I'd like such a friend for my very ownest and dearest. The other girl, a red-haired minx who walked with her arm about my girl's waist—how jealous I was of her! I watched until Aunt Paula dragged me away. As I went, I shouted over my shoulder, 'Hello, little girl!' The little dark girl saw me, and shouted back, 'Hello!' Dear little thing. I hope she's grown up safe and very happy! She'll never know what she meant to me!"

Her lips quivered again. Looking up into her face, Blake wondered for an instant at the sudden softness of her eyes. Then he realized that they were slowly filling with tears. He reached again to seize her hands.

"Oh, no, no—wait!" she said, weakly. After a pause, she resumed:

"That got up rebellion in me. All children have such periods, I've heard. I'm docile enough now. But before I was through with this one, Aunt Paula had to make my destiny clear to me—long before she meant to do so. And I grew to be resigned, and then glad, because it was a greater thing."

Here a rapid, inexplicable change crossed her face. From its firmness of health and strength, it fell toward the look of one "called"—

"I must go back again. Between Aunt Paula and me there was always a great sympathy. It's hard to describe. Often we do not have to speak even of the most important things. When I come to know more about other people, I wondered at first why they needed to do so much talking. Things have happened—things that I would not expect you to believe—"

She had kindled now, and she looked into his eyes like some sybil, divinely unconscious, preaching the unbelievable.

"I knew dimly, as a child knows, and accepts, that Aunt Paula had some wonderful mission and that it had to do with the other world—all you're taught when they teach you to say your prayers. Little by little she made me understand. I grew up before I understood fully. The Guides—Aunt Paula's—I have none as yet—had told her that I was a Light."

He caught at this word, for his lover's impatience was burning and beating within him.

"Light!" he said; "my Light!"

She regarded him gravely, and then, as though his fervor had frightened her, she looked beyond at the apple leaves.

"Don't—you'll know soon why you mustn't. Oh, help me, for I am unhappy!" She controlled a little upward ripple of her throat. "She, the Guides say, is a great Light, but I am to be a greater. They sent her to find me, and they directed her to keep me as she has—away from the world. When she first told me that, I was terrified. She had to sit beside me and hold my hand until I went to sleep. It's wonderful how quickly I do sleep when Aunt Paula's with me—she's the most soothing person in the world. If it weren't for her, I don't know what I'd do when I get into my tired times."

"You're never going to have any more tired times, Light," he said.

She went on inflexibly, but he knew that she had heard:

"There was one thing which I did not understand, and neither perhaps did Aunt Paula. The Guides sometimes seem foolish, but in the end they're always wise; I suppose they waited until the time should come. Though I tried to help it along, though I cried with impatience, I couldn't begin to get voices. I've sat in dark rooms for hours, as Aunt Paula wished me to do. I've felt many true things, but I could never say honestly that I heard anything. But the Guides told Aunt Paula 'wait.' And at last she learned what was the matter.

"I don't know quite how to tell you this next. It came on the way back from India. She had gone there—but perhaps you won't be interested to know why she went. Though I was more than twenty, I'd never had what you might call a flirtation. I'd been kept by the Guides away from men—as I'd once been kept from other children. There was a young Englishman on the steamer. And I liked him."

Blake gave a sudden start, and rose automatically. So this confidence led to another man—that was the obstacle! She seemed to catch his thought.

"Oh, not that!" she cried; "he was only an incident—won't you hear me?" Blake dropped at her feet again.

"But I liked him, though never any more—he was a friend and girls need to play. But he wanted to be more than a friend. Aunt Paula passed us on the deck one evening. After I had gone to bed, she came into my stateroom. When the power is in her, I know it—and I never saw it so strong as that night. It shone out of her. But that wasn't the strange thing. Only twice before, had I heard the voices speak from her mouth—mostly, she used to tell me what they said to her. But it was not Aunt Paula talking then—it was Martha, her first and best control. Shall I tell you all she said?"

Out of the confused