"She is always so," Mrs. Lambert explained. "She seems to die for the time being."
"That is very strange," muttered Weissmann. "May I listen for her heart-beat?" Three raps assented, and a moment later he said, with increased excitement: "I cannot detect her heart-beat."
Clarke reassured him. "Do not be alarmed. She is not dead. Proceed with your experiment." There was a distinct note of contempt in his voice.
As Morton laid his hand upon the soft coils of her hair Viola again moved slightly, as a sleeper stirs beneath a caress, disturbed yet not distressed--to settle instantly into deeper dream.
"We are ready," called Weissmann. "Whatever happens now Miss Lambert is not the cause. Take Mr. Clarke's hands in yours--"
"Mrs. Lambert's also," added Morton.
"Our hands are all touching," answered Kate.
"Now, let us see!" cried Weissmann, and his voice rang triumphantly. "Now, spirits, to your work!"
Clarke laughed contemptuously. "You scientists are very amusing. Your unbelief is heroic."
As they stood thus a powerful revulsion took place in Morton's mind, and with a painful constriction in his throat he bowed to the silent girl, and with an inconsistency which he would not have published to the world, he prayed that something might happen--not to demonstrate the return of the dead but to prove her innocence.
As he waited the pencil began to tap on the table, and with its stir his nerves took fire. A leaf of paper flew by, brushing his face like the wing of a bird. A hand clutched his shoulder; then, as if to make every explanation of no avail, the room filled with fairy unseen folk. Books began to hurtle through the air and to fall upon the table. A banjo on the wall was strummed. The entire library seemed crowded with tricksy pucks, a bustling, irresponsible, elfish crew, each on some inconsequential action bent; until, as if at a signal, the megaphone tumbled to the floor with a clang, and all was still--a silence deathly deep, as if a bevy of sprites, frightened from their play, had whirled upward and away, leaving the scene of their revels empty, desolate, and forlorn.
"That is all," said Clarke.
"How can you tell?" asked Kate, her voice faint and shrill with awe.
"The fall of the horn to the floor is a sure sign of the end. You may turn up the gas, but very slowly."
Stunned by the significance, the far-reaching implications of his experiment, Morton remained standing while Weissmann turned on the light.
Pale, in deep, placid sleep, Viola sat precisely as they had left her, bound, helpless, and exonerated. She recalled to Morton's mind a picture (in his school-books) of a martyr-maiden, who was depicted chained to the altar of some hideous, heathen deity, a monster who devoured the flesh of virgins and demanded with pitiless lust the fairest of the race.