CHAPTER IX.
THE CHAIN OF VOICES.
This name I gave to the voices I heard as I tried to go about my work. I was so languid, physically, that I moved slowly and my actions were criticised and commented on in such a scoffing and cruel manner by some unseen entities that I became so wavering that I would move first one way, then the opposite, in putting down a plate or cup, etc., as if unable to decide as to where it should go.
It seemed to me as if I heard the voices second-hand—as if someone were telling me second-hand what they were saying. It was something like this:—"I see you standing there with a cup in your hand and a smile on your face"—then unmerciful criticism of my person, and the most dreadfully low language I have ever heard in my life, and a feeling that someone was laughing at echoes—echoes—echoes—of the one thing, but each echo twisted into a different form. What it all meant I can't say, but it made me feel I was being watched in every movement.
This I called the "Chain of Voices" and myself the pendant as being separate from them and attached against my will. I supposed the chain in this fashion—Why I don't know.
First Voice attached to Second Voice which was attached to Third Voice and so on round in a circle till they reached the "Bear" at the end of the Chain—Pluto, I called him, for they were but demons scoffing and laughing at me, their victim.
I also supposed that somewhere that "Bear" at the end of the Chain—Pluto—was directing his force through the links who delivered it each in her own fashion. But why? And why aimed at me?
Tony was away all this time. I was always thinking of him and somehow I seemed to be conscious of his whereabouts.
He wrote to me that he was leaving by boat for Grafton.
I read the letter and put it aside and went to do my marketing.
"Patrick" was with me. He was always there within call. I was conscious of him because I found a smile coming into my eyes and mouth—a happy smile and a merry one. I knew it was not my own.
The day Tony wrote to me that he left Grafton I found myself swaying as if to the rocking of a boat. This surprised me. I seemed to be in touch with him—a kind of telepathy
