Page:The strange experiences of Tina Malone.djvu/71

Rh And again I went away feeling that my rooms perhaps held the influence and that away in the country perhaps I could lose it.

So again I went to Kitty's.

When Sybil, standing at the gate, tried to get at the cause of my trouble, she asked me if the voices followed me when I had gone to my sisters before or whether they were only in my own rooms.

"No," I told her, "they followed me."

And so they did. Yet somehow I felt that when I was with other people I at least thought of them less.

Kitty was always ready for me and it comforted me to have the children near me and to get away from the thought of my rooms. I tried hard to forget and to make myself think they were not there. It was horrible to see the look of compassion on the faces of my relations. I tried to keep my voice even and sensible and not to seem absent-minded.

And then one morning as I sat on my bed as if in a dream as I so often do, and my mind in a still calm, I found myself thinking of my little golden haired cousin that I used to admire so long ago—a beautiful spirited child. I found myself thinking of her standing on the dining-room table as I had stood her one New Year's Eve long ago. The front room had been full of visitors and it had occurred to me to keep the folding doors shut and to dress up the lovely child all flushed with sleep, as the New Year. She stood there like a little angel with long glistening wings, a star on her head and a wand with the figures showing the New Year to usher it in as we heard the clock strike and I opened the folding doors.

What should have made me think of her then I don't know. I was conscious of someone saying:

"I am getting at your sub-conscious mind, dear, at the age of twenty and I see there a little child. Why do you cry whenever I speak of it? Were you sad then? What made you sad? I see you then at twenty and the one you loved most was a little child."

It was some mornings later I found myself with my mind calmed in the same manner and someone saying:

"Sit still dear. I am getting at your sub-conscious mind. It is psycho-analysis and I'm getting at your sub-conscious mind. I've got you now at the night of the 'operation.' Lie back and let me see how your hands went then."

I found myself uttering little weak cries as I did that night and my heart seemed to stop. Then a beautiful calm comecame [sic] over me as if the hypnotic strain had loosened, and someone said:

"I'm with you, dear, in spirit, and I can be with you