The Strange Experiences of Tina Malone. Ethel C. M. Paige

her, and she soon became possessed with the idea that she must let part of her flat.

      From that time on we worried together—I suggesting, she sometimes complying; I offering help, she sometimes begging me to come down to give it.

      We both set to work to try to find tenants.

      *⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

      I used to call Miss Perkins in my thoughts, "The White Priestess."

      She was thin and wiry and always dressed in white. It was a belief of hers that white attracted the good spirits, and black the bad. She was a great friend of Naomi's, but she was the sort of being who believed so much in living her own life that we saw very little of her.

      From one of my windows I could see her standing at hers in meditation.

      One day I spoke to her, not knowing of the seriousness of this performance.

      "Is your cold better?" I asked, "I heard you coughing all night."

      There was a pause, in which I was made to feel that I was interrupting.

      "Yes, thank you. How are you to-day?" she asked.

      She very rarely said anything else than that to me. It seemed to be her stock remark and she cared nothing for the answer.

      But she loved Naomi. I used to wonder sometimes if it were just ordinary everyday jealousy of my friendship with Naomi that brought the whole thing about.

      They had one broom between them—this belonged to Naomi—and it would be:

      "Naomi, are you using that broom?" in low, impressive tones.

      "No!" Naomi would call on a high note in answer, "Do you want it?"

      "Yes, if you can spare it."

      Then they used one iron between them and this belonged to the Priestess.

      It would be:

      "Naomi, I've finished with the iron if you want to use it," and Naomi would call her thanks and go for it.

      I, used to a home where there were never less than two irons on a full-flowing gas, and always two or three brooms in the corner of the kitchen ready for use, laughed at these doings—

      ​"You can use my irons," I said, "you'll never be able to iron your things properly with one."

      "Oh, no," she said, "I'm going to use Diana's."

      "I don’t know how you can like her so much," I said. "She's so unsympathetic; she shuts herself up there and doesn't care for anybody."

      "You don't know her," she said, "I've lived with her before."

      There was a strange mystery about the feeling between them. It was the custom of the little Priestess to go about her business of cleaning her room, which was spotless, washing her clothes, making her meditations, and going to the Occult classes or services, to which she had pledged herself, without letting any personal feeling intervene. I used to be conscious, in a cold sort of fashion, of her neighbourhood, and her light used to be put in the window, with its reflection behind it, to burn all night. It comforted me rather, when I went there, to see the reflection on the white wall from my own window till I found my own bright, beautiful star—Venus or Mars, I don't know which—which looked down on me night after night.

      But she did not like me; she would have nothing to do with me at all.

      She tried to persuade Naomi to join one of her occult classes.

      "I'm sure you would be most psychic," she said in her impressive way, looking up at Naomi with eyes full of serious importance, "we might find we could form a class here."

      "Oh, I'm not sure that I would join," I said, laughing. The occult had never appealed to me.

      "Oh, I don't mean you," she said coldly, "I mean Naomi."

      But Naomi was not sure either. In a way she was a believer in the occult too. She used to make me both amused and irritable with her dreams and omens. She was Irish and perhaps she owed her superstitions to her nationality. She had many talks with Diana when I was out and I used sometimes to get little glimpses of occult ideas in our long talks afterwards.

      Once, Naomi had a bad cold and stayed in bed. I had called through her window to her in the morning, on my way out. When I came in the same way in the evening to ask after her, she said, "Di has been here—all my fears are gone. I'm not feverish now."

      "Fears!" I thought, and wondered. How strange to have fears when you lay in bed with a cold.

      She knew I laughed at her belief in omens, in palmists, clairvoyants, etc.

      ​One day, as I came down the path towards her front door, she came forward with a newspaper cutting.

      "Oh, I thought you were Diana," she said, and drew back with a hard look in her eyes. "I was going to tell her of this I had found in my newspaper—a beautiful thing about the healing of trees and plants."

      "Show me," I said, and held out my hand; but she drew it back.

      "No," she said, looking almost angry, "you would try to spoil my faith in it; I won't let you see it."

      I used to get so tired of their silly talk about vibrations. The White Priestess would draw her skirts aside, and move further away, if she happened to meet me, and thought I stood too near. No one was ever allowed to go into her bedroom, and she told someone once, that to sleep in any bed than her own, was like using anyone else's toothbrush. She even made Naomi nearly as bad as herself, for, when I was going to pop down on the old stretcher that was out on the verandah, Naomi cried, impulsively, with her hand out:

      "Oh, don't sit there, dear! I've been sitting there; you stay at that end and I'll sit at this."

      The next minute she was ready to laugh at herself, for she said:

      "Oh no, come along. There you are, that's comfortable," and plumped the cushions about behind me.

      The Priestess was a germ hunter. By that I mean she chased them, not that she wished to investigate them.

      "Oh, I can't sit very far away from the door, because you see I need a-i-r."

      This was said with head bent, neck stiffened, and a look of grave importance on her face.

      "You see, when you breathe, you take in all the bad germs that are given out."

      I wondered if she ever thought of the people next her taking in the bad germs she was giving out herself, but this did not seem to occur to her.

      I once went to a public lecture and she happened to be there. Not knowing any of the people round me and seeing that she was alone, I innocently went over and sat on the empty chair next to her.

      "I thought I'd come and sit with you," I said.

      She appeared not to hear me, but after some minutes, made some remark and to my astonishment, got up and walked away. She went over to talk to someone opposite, took the chair next to her and when this person left to go home, I, thinking perhaps she had been absent-minded, went over to her again.

      "You won't think me very rude, will you, but I have to go," she said, and got up and went.

      ​It was easy to see why she went, she did not care to "mix" vibrations. That was before I went to Chester House—I did not know then what they meant by "vibrations;" it was not a thing we talked about at home. She was a faddist about food too, not liking to eat fruit or vegetables that did not come straight from the garden. Such chastity, O Diana! Such a Puritan that she became a statue. If I spoke to her she paused and sometimes seemed to forget to answer. It could not always have been that she did not hear.

      One day, when we three were together, and Naomi told a funny story, Diana laughed and told another. Turning to her for sympathy, I capped it with another. The Priestess shut up like an oyster. Naomi was walking in front at the time and I was at the Priestess' side. She made no sign that she had even heard. I spoke to Naomi of it afterwards and she said:

      "Yes,