Chapter 29 - Page 2

and ended by reading them with deep attention. He was amazed to
discover that for many years profoundly scientific men had been
seriously investigating and experimenting with mysteries unexplainable
by the accepted laws of material science. They had discussed, argued and
written grave books upon them. They had been doing all this before any
society for psychical research had founded itself and the intention of
new logic was to be scientific rather than psychological. They had
written books, scattered through the years, on mesmerism, hypnosis,
abnormal mental conditions, the powers of suggestion, even unexplored
dimensions and in modern days psychotherapeutics.

"What has amazed me is my own ignorance of the prolonged and serious
nature of the investigation of an astonishing subject," he said in
talking with the Duchess. "To realise that analytical minds have been
doing grave work of which one has known nothing is an actual shock to
one's pride. I suppose the tendency would have been to pooh-pooh it. The
cheap, modern popular form is often fantastic and crude, but there
remains the fact that it all contains truths not to be explained by the
rules we have always been familiar with."

The Duchess had read the book he had brought her and held it in her
hands.

"Perhaps the time has come, in which we are to learn the new ones," she
said.

"Perhaps we are being forced to learn them--as a result of our
pooh-poohing," was his answer. "Some of us may learn that clear-cut
disbelief is at least indiscreet."

Therefore upon a certain morning he sat long in reflection over a letter
which had arrived from Dowie. He read it a number of times.

* * * * *

"I don't know what your lordship may think," Dowie said and he felt she
held herself with a tight rein. "If I may say so, it's what's going to
come out of it that matters and not what any of us think of it. So far
it seems as if a miracle had happened. About a week ago she wakened in
the morning looking as I'd been afraid she'd never look again. There was
actually colour in her thin little face that almost made it look not so
thin. There was a light in her eyes that quite startled me. She lay on
her bed and smiled like a child that's suddenly put out of pain. She
said--quite quiet and natural--that she'd seen her husband. She said he
had _come_ and talked to her a long time and that it was not a dream,
and he was not an angel--he was himself. At first I was terrified by a
dreadful thought that her poor young mind had given way. But she had no
fever and she was as sweet and sensible as if she was talking to her
Dowie in her own nursery. And, my lord, this is what does matter. She