"Another question--more vital than any I have yet asked, because it
concerns my own well-being and happiness," continued Paul; "how is it
possible that Dorothy can live in a place like this with a being who
is only semi-material?

"Because her nature is double, as is mine," answered the old man.
"Dorothy, like her sisters and mother, passed out of this life more
than a hundred and fifty years ago."

"And did the same causes operate to bring her back to earth?"

Ah Ben became more serious than ever as he answered: "You have
touched upon the sorest point of all, and one which requires further
elucidation. Sudden and unnatural death has a retarding tendency upon
the spirit's progress; but where one has caused his own destruction,
the evil resulting is incalculable. I was a suicide; and ten thousand
times over had I better have borne all the ills that earth could heap
upon me, than have stooped to such folly. For in what has it resulted?
A prolonged mental agony, such as you can never conceive; for I have
no home in heaven nor earth, but am forced to wander amid the shadows
of each world, unrecognized by those either above or below me. Here I
am shunned upon every hand, and, as you saw for yourself, I was equally
avoided in Levachan. But that is not all; in the ignorance and
selfishness of my grief, I yearned for my lost ones with a solicitude,
a consuming fierceness and power of will which insanity only can equal.
By nature I was intense; and even had I not committed the fatal act, my
vitality would have burned itself away with the awful concentration of
feeling. But it must be remembered that I was not the only sufferer from
this pitiful lack of self-control. The stronger desires and emotions of