Kate, waiting impatiently in her turn, met him at the door. "Well, did you see her? What did she say?" Her voice rose in excitement, for she perceived unusual gravity in the lines of his face.
"Your 'far country' lies on the borders of hell," he replied, with disconcerting succinctness. "Yes, I saw her--or, rather, the ruin of her."
She recoiled before this tone. "What do you mean?"
He shook himself free of his coat. "She has descended swiftly. She now lends herself to the shallowest, basest trickery."
"I don't believe it. What has happened to make you so bitter?"
"I will tell you presently," he replied, hanging up his hat with aggravating deliberation. "But not here. Come to the library." He led the way and she followed quite meekly, for she perceived in him something new and harsh. She sat quite still while he filled his pipe and lit it, waited until the soothing flow of smoke through its stem had softened his face. He began, sadly: "The girl has gone beyond our interference, Kate; and if she weren't so pretty, if I hadn't seen her when she was wholesome and altogether charming, I would not have wasted this evening on her. To-night's doings were unforgivable."
"Did she give you a sitting?"
"No, but they were in the midst of a séance"--he spoke this word with infinite disgust--"and the usher, mistaking me for an invited guest, thrust me into the very centre of the circle."
"How lucky! I wish I had been there."
"Well, that's as you look at it. When I realized what was going on I wanted to leave, and, I repeat, had the chief actress been an old hag or the usual sloven who plays this game, I would have fled; but she was as beautiful as a statue as she lay there, professedly in deep trance."
"You're sure it was Viola?"
"I wish there were a doubt! Yes, she was there, surrounded by a group of Pratt's friends, giving a performance." This word, too, expressed his contempt, his pain. "She went the whole length--lent herself to the cheapest kind of jugglery, playing with horrible adroitness upon the emotions of a lot of bereaved men and women. It was revolting, Kate. It shakes one's faith in humanity to see such a girl in such a position--and that nice-appearing old mother sat there serene as a tabby-cat while her daughter bamboozled a dozen open-faced ninnies."
"Tell me exactly what happened; I can't share your horror till I know what the girl actually did."
He approached the details with a grimace.
"First of all, imagine a little half-circle of well-dressed men and women, in a big drawing-room, enclosing a girl lying on a low chair under a single gas-jet, and a man standing beside her speechifying."