South Bend news-times. (South Bend, Ind.) 1913-1938, 1913-09-23
Continued from Monday.)
CHAPTER XIV.
The Final TEST

Could We have sat with Rosalie lie
Grange through 80 years of her me
diumship." we would have found in
all her assaults on the secrets of the
human heart a certain sameness.
There are. after all, only a few main
roads TO the intelligence of man and
woman. Rosalie travelled these roads
again and again, varying the method
only by those infinitesimaI shades
which the artist knows. Her approach
10 SenOrita Perez-known so far in
these pages as Miss Estrilla-differed
In no essential from her approach TO
thousand lOve-lorn shop girls, trou
bled mothers. perplexed business men,
during her 80 years in her old trade.
She simply refined her methods a lit
tie for Miss Estrilla- as she had done
always for her "first-class customers"
First, there was the approach;
mist of hocus-pocus Illuminated here
and there with the CLINT of a secret
surprising fact which the medium
could not possibly know" This was
period wherein the dupe was always
uncOnvinced but fascinated. Some
professed TO be amused; and they
showed il by giggles which died pre-
maturely into long silences. Some
unCOnNlnCeQ.
proved their dawning conviction by
brutal denials Some put tests to her.
obvious and subtle, according to their
natures. None had ever attempted
so daring and so clever test as Miss
Estrilla, with her pretended revolver;
and this was bit Of evidence. a guide
post which would have made slender
appeal to Inspector Martin MCGEE or
to any jury that ever sat in judgment.
Ill =, To-
factors which no male policeman
would ever perceive. adept at reading
whole volumes of fact from the Incl
dental dropping of lip or lifting of
an eyebrow, this was the most peril
nent bit of evidence she had yet dis
covered. For those who had most TO
conceal most to lose by the revela-
ton of their souls to a blackmailer or
a spy, were the very people who put
such tests to her; and the harder the
test, she had always found, the deeper
and blacker the ultimate secret.
Could we have followed ROsalie
through all those years. we should
nave discovered another most illumi-
mating fact-this one a light on that
contradictory and complex character.
1t was her Impotence, as time wore
on, with certain blasphemies on hu
man affection which she had commit
beginnings 1t is a dreadful thing to
barter with the warnings of parents
for departed children, of bereaved
wives for the husband gone before
with mans deepest and highest-and
all for the paltry fee of a discredited
profession. In her early period, Ro-
sale had committed this sin of the
heart lightly, without inner blemish.
Then-as always in youth-her NOR
ais were the morals of environment.
The thoughts Of youth are not voices,
but echoes.
When the time came to her to think
on her own account, when, out Of her
infinitely diverse characteristics she
began TO form character, Rosalie lie
Grange salved her conscience with
the reflection that she was, after all,
doing these people good; that she
never hunted as others did, for big
game: that she took only a legitimate
fee and gave in return consolation
and good advice. That served her
into her reflective forties, the period
when we have walked over the sum-
NIT OF life. when in lonely dawns
and wakeful midnights the thought
of mans ultimate end pierces all our
meditatiOns on the future. In those
somber lights, thoughts become plain
to which the brilliant light of full
active days blinds us. And Rosalie,