Adele dropped for the moment her tone of raillery.
"I am not unwilling to believe," she said, "but I cannot. I am
interested--yes. You see how much I have studied the subject. But
I cannot believe. I have heard stories of how these manifestations
are produced--stories which make me laugh. I cannot help it. The
tricks are so easy. A young girl wearing a black frock which does
not rustle--it is always a black frock, is it not, because a black
frock cannot be seen in the dark?--carrying a scarf or veil, with
which she can make any sort of headdress if only she is a little
clever, and shod in a pair of felt-soled slippers, is shut up in a
cabinet or placed behind a screen, and the lights are turned down
or out--" Adele broke off with a comic shrug of the shoulders.
"Bah! It ought not to deceive a child."
Celia sat with a face which WOULD grow red. She did not look, but
none the less she was aware that Mme. Dauvray was gazing at her
with a perplexed frown and some return of her suspicion showing in
her eyes. Adele Tace was not content to leave the subject there.
"Perhaps," she said, with a smile, "Mlle. Celie dresses in that
way for a seance?"
"Madame shall see tonight," Celia stammered, and Camille Dauvray
rather sternly repeated her words.
"Yes, Adele shall see tonight. I myself will decide what you shall
wear, Celie."
Adele Tace casually suggested the kind of dress which she would
prefer.
"Something light in colour with a train, something which will hiss
and whisper if mademoiselle moves about the room--yes, and I think
one of mademoiselle's big hats," she said. "We will have
mademoiselle as modern as possible, so that, when the great ladies
of the past appear in the coiffure of their day, we may be sure it
is not Mlle. Celie who represents them."
"I will speak to Helene," said Mme. Dauvray, and Adele Tace was
content.
There was a particular new dress of which she knew, and it was
very desirable that Mlle. Celie should wear it tonight. For one
thing, if Celia wore it, it would help the theory that she had put
it on because she expected that night a lover; for another, with
that dress there went a pair of satin slippers which had just come
home from a shoemaker at Aix, and which would leave upon soft
mould precisely the same imprints as the grey suede shoes which
the girl was wearing now.
Celia was not greatly disconcerted by Mme. Rossignol's
precautions. She would have to be a little more careful, and Mme.
de Montespan would be a little longer in responding to the call of
Mme. Dauvray than most of the other dead ladies of the past had
been. But that was all. She was, however, really troubled in
another way. All through dinner, at every word of the
conversation, she had felt her reluctance towards this seance
swelling into a positive disgust. More than once she had felt
driven by some uncontrollable power to rise up at the table and
cry out to Adele: "You are right! It IS trickery. There is no truth in it."