Possessed | Page 2

responsibilities in these sentimental
arrangements.
"No, no! I call that loathsome, abominable," declared Penelope, and the
poet adoringly agreed with her, although his practice had been
notoriously at variance with these professions.
"Suppose a woman finds herself married to some beast of a man,"
flashed Roberta, "some worthless drunkard, do you mean to tell me it is
her duty to stick to such a husband, and spoil her whole life?"

To which Penelope, hiding her agitation, said: "I--I am not discussing
that phase of the question. I mean that if a woman is alone in the world,
if she longs for the companionship of a man--the intimate
companionship--"
"Ha, ha, ha!" snickered the poet. I can see his close cropped yellow
beard and his red face wrinkling in merriment at this supposition.
"I hate your Greenwich Village philosophy," stormed Penelope. "You
haven't the courage, the understanding to commit one big splendid sin
that even the angels in heaven might approve, but you fritter away your
souls and spoil your bodies in cheap little sins that are
just--disgusting!"
The poet shrivelled under her scorn.
"But--one splendid sin?" he stammered. "That means a woman must go
to her mate, doesn't it?"
"Without marriage? Never! I'll tell you what a woman should do--I'll
tell you what I would do, just to prove that I am not conventional, I
would act on the principle that there is a sacred right God has given to
every woman who is born, a right that not even God Himself can take
away from her, I mean the right to--"
A muffled scream interrupted her, a quick catching of the breath by a
stout lady, a newcomer, who was seated on a divan, I should have
judged this woman to be a rather commonplace person except that her
deeply sunken eyes seemed to carry a far away expression as if she saw
things that were invisible to others. Now her eyes were fixed on
Penelope.
"Oh, the beautiful scarlet light!" she murmured. "There! Don't you
see--moving down her arm? And another one--on her shoulder! Scarlet
lights! My poor child! My poor child!"
Ordinarily we would have laughed at this, for, of course, we saw no
scarlet lights, but somehow now we did not laugh. On the contrary we

fell into hushed and wondering attention, and, turning to Roberta, we
learned that this was Seraphine, a trance medium who had given
séances for years to scientists and occult investigators, and was now
assisting Dr. W----, of the American Occult Society.
"A séance! Magnificent! Let us have a séance!" whispered the poet.
"Tell us, madam, can you really lift the veil of the future?"
But already Seraphine had settled back on the divan and I saw that her
eyes had closed and her breathing was quieter, although her body was
shaken from time to time by little tremors as if she were recovering
from some great agitation. We watched her wonderingly, and presently
she began to speak, at first slowly and painfully, then in her natural
tone. Her message was so brief, so startling in its purport that there can
be no question of any error in this record.
"Penelope will--cross the ocean," Seraphine began dreamily. "Her
husband will die--very soon. There will be war--soon. She will go to
the war and will have honors conferred upon her--on the battlefield.
She will--she will,"--the medium's face changed startlingly to a mask of
anguish and her bosom heaved. "Oh, my poor child! I see you--I see
you going down to--to horror--to terror--Ah!"
She cried out in fright and stopped speaking; then, after a moment of
dazed effort, she came back to reality and looked at us as before out of
her sunken eyes, a plump little kindly faced woman resting against a
blue pillow.
* * * * *
Now, whatever one may think of mediums, the facts are that Penelope's
husband died suddenly in an automobile accident within a month of
this memorable evening. And within two months the great war burst
upon the world. And within a year Penelope did cross the ocean as a
Red Cross Nurse, and it is a matter of record that she was decorated
for valor under fire of the enemy.
This story has to do with the remainder of Seraphine's prophecy.

CHAPTER I
(January, 1919)
VOICES
Penelope moved nervously in her chair, evidently very much troubled
about something as she waited in the doctor's office. Her two years in
France had added a touch of mystery to her strange beauty. Her eyes
were more veiled in their burning, as if she had glimpsed something
that had frightened her; yet they were eyes that, even unintentionally,
carried a message to men, an alluring, appealing message to men. With
her red mouth, her fascinatingly unsymmetrical mouth, and her sinuous