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Godfrey, who experienced a curious feeling of exhaustion and of emptiness of brain, yawned and apologized for having fallen asleep, whereon the professor and the colonel both assured him that it was quite natural on so warm a day. Only Madame Riennes smiled like a sphinx, and asked him if his dreams were pleasant. To this he replied that he remembered none.
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.
But of this be sure, my Godfrey, when that happen, that it is your own fault, for had you trusted to your godmamma Riennes it never would have chanced, since she would have shown you how to get your plum and eat it to the stone and then throw away the stone and get other plums and be happy happy and full instead of empty. Well, so it is, and as I must I tell you.
He knew the writing on the envelope at once, and was minded not to open it, for this and the foreign stamp told him that it came from Madame Riennes. Still curiosity, or a desire to take his mind off the miseries by which it was beset, prevailed, and he did open the envelope and read. It ran thus: "Ah! my little friend, my godson in the speerit, Godfrey
Coming finally to the conclusion that he had but one, namely his father, which accounted for the solicitude expressed so earnestly in the letter, he uttered an expletive, which should not have passed his youthful lips, and threw it down upon the top of that of Madame Riennes.
He did send Madame Riennes some money, partly out of pity ten pounds in a postal order without any covering letter, a folly that did not tend to a cessation of her epistolatory efforts. On reaching town Godfrey went straight to Hampstead. There to his surprise he found all prepared for his reception. "I was expecting you, my dear," said Mrs.
I know much of Madame Riennes and I will leave her flat as that," and with surprising alacrity he jumped on a large black beetle which, unhappily for itself, just then ran across the observatory floor to enjoy the warmth of the stove. "Wait," he added, as Godfrey was leaving. "First kneel down, I have memory of the ancient prayer, or if I forget bits, I can fill in the holes."
He shuddered, too, at the thought of this Eleanor, who made use of him to appear in human form, and on his knees prayed God to protect him from her. This indeed happened, if she had any real existence and was not some mere creation of the brain of Madame Riennes, made visible by the working of laws whereof we have no knowledge.
Then he began to talk of gnosticism, and witchcraft, and Incubi, and Succubi, and the developments of modern spiritualism, till Godfrey was quite bewildered. At length he paused, relit the new pipe, and said: "These matters we will study afterwards; they are, I assure you, most entertaining. Meanwhile, we have to deal with your Madame Riennes. All right, oh! quite all right. I will be her match.
It is strange to think that the same God who made the stars also made Madame Riennes. Truly He is a charitable and tolerant God!" "Perhaps the devil made her," suggested Godfrey. And now to our stars that are far away and pure, though who knows but that if one were near to them, they would prove as full of foulness as the earth?"
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