The party sat round the little table, talking of wonderful things; Madame Riennes looked at him and sometimes took his hand, which he did not like, and then he remembered no more until he woke up, feeling tired, and yet in a way exhilarated, for with the mysteries of hypnotic sleep he was not yet acquainted.

Nor did it occur to him that he was being used a medium by certain of the most advanced spiritualists in the world.
By degrees, however, inklings of the truth began to come.

Thus, one day his consciousness awoke while his body seemed still to be wrapt in trance, and he saw that there was a person present who had not been of the party when he went to sleep.

A young woman, clad in a white robe, with lovely hair flowing down her back, stood by his side and held his supine fingers in her hand.
She was beautiful, and yet unearthly, she wore ornaments also, but as he watched, to his amazement these seemed to change.

What had been a fillet of white stones, like diamonds, which bound her hair, turned to one of red stones, like rubies, and as it did so the colour of her eyes, which were large and very tranquil, altered.
She was speaking in a low, rich voice to Miss Ogilvy, who answered, addressing her as Sister Eleanor, but what she said Godfrey could not understand.