Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/278

 to see, Mr. Winnery, that there is no trace of green in your aura."

Mr. Winnery murmured his gratitude and said modestly he supposed that that was a thing you could not control and that therefore he ought to take no credit to himself. Secretly he was feeling disturbed for fear that her intensity might increase and throw her into a trance. What could he do with her if she suddenly went into a trance?

She did not. "That is what interested me about the statue," she continued. "It has an aura, Mr. Winnery, a positive, unmistakable aura, and it is a vile mixture of red and green. That is why I thought the thing better buried again at once."

"And what does such a mixture signify?"

"That, Mr. Winnery, I cannot bring myself to tell you. Will you have more tea?"

But Mr. Winnery had done his duty to the social amenities and did not feel called upon to drink a second cup of hay-water.

"But I don't understand, Mrs. Weatherby, how a statue, an inanimate thing, may have an aura. I thought auras were connected, so to speak, with what I suppose you would call the life fluid."

He found himself wondering if Miss Fosdick had been forced to undergo much of this sort of thing, and his sympathy for her deepened and broadened.

"It is an extraordinary case. Doubtless the aura is an accumulation of evil thought directed toward the statue during its worship some centuries ago."

(Mr. Winnery thought, "I must ask after Miss Fosdick and yet how dare I after she has discovered the appearance of red in my aura.") Aloud he