Page:The strange experiences of Tina Malone.djvu/11

Rh They were very mysterious about it and were not supposed to answer questions. What they did in the class I attended I can't quite say. They seemed to talk for ever about atmospheres and auras and former lives and life after death and mentality till I longed to turn the subject to books and pictures and art and the world I was accustomed to.

They never really accepted me, and I never really accepted them.

No one ever thought of bowing to anyone. If you were introduced one day, they turned away from you the next just as you were going to bow. They tried to be your friend; but their idea of friendship was to put an arm across your waist and try to do you good. That you might be doing them good, too, by coming into contact with them, never seemed to enter their minds. If you had not been there to practice on, life would have lost half its savour.

Sybil was up to some mischief with me, I knew it. She was doing me good with a vengeance; and Tony, with dark eyes full of meaning, always fixed on her, was always coming to my rescue.

"This is Miss Malone," she said, introducing me one day to one of the teachers, "I am just telling her she must not be so emotional."

Up came Tony, and just as I was bowing to the man introduced, thrust a picture of Christ in front of me where it was seen by all of us.

"This is what I found to-day," he said.

I felt, and perhaps Sybil knew too, that he had purposely interrupted.

What it was they were up to I did not in the least understand then. It was later that I knew.