Miss Arnold smiled. She had the most contagious smile!—though it struck me even then that it wasn't amerrysmile. Her face, with its piquant little nose, was meant to be gay and happy I thought; yet it wasn't either. It was more plucky and brave; and the eyes had known sadness, I felt sure. I guessed her age as twenty-three or twenty-four.
She said that she would love to work for me. The girls who were waiting to be interviewed were sent politely away in search of other engagements while I settled things with Miss Arnold. The more I looked at her, the more I talked with her, the more definite became an impression that I'd seen her before—a long time ago. At last I asked her the question: "Can it be that we've met somewhere?"
Colour streamed over her pale face. "Yes, Princess, we have," she said. "At least, we didn't exactlymeet. It couldn't be called that."
"What was it then, if not a meeting?" I encouraged her.
"I was in my first job as secretary. I was with Miss Opal Fawcett. When it was Ben Ali's day out—Ben Ali was her Arab butler, you know—I used to open the door. I opened it for you and—and Lady June Dana when you came. I remember quite well, though I never thoughtyouwould."
Why did the girl blush so? I wondered. Could it be that she was ashamed of having been with Opal Fawcett, or—was it something to do with the mention of June? Miss Arnold had evidently just left her place with Robert Lorillard and probably the name of his wife had been "taboo" between them, for I couldn't fancy Robert talking of June with any one—unless with some old friend who had known her well.
"Ah, that's it!" I exclaimed. "Now I do remember. June and I spoke of you afterward, as we were going away. We said, 'What an interesting girl!' Nearly five years ago! It seems a hundred."
Miss Arnold didn't speak, and again my thoughts flew back.
Opal Fawcett suddenly sprang into fame with the breaking out of the war, when all the sweethearts and wives of England yearned to give "mascots" to their loved men who fought, or to get news from beyond the veil, of those who had "gone west." Opal had, however, been making her weird way to success for several years before. She had a strange history—as strange as her own personality.
A man named Fawcett edited a Spiritualistic paper, called theGleam. One foggy October night (it was All Hallow E'en) he heard a shrill, wailing cry outside his old house in Westminster. (Naturally it was ahauntedhouse, or he wouldn't have cared to live in it!) Someone had left a tiny baby girl in a basket at his door, and with it a letter in a woman's handwriting. This said that the child had been born in October, so its name must be Opal.
Fawcett was a bachelor; but he imagined that spirit influences had turned the unknown mother's thoughts to him. For this reason he kept the baby, obligingly named it Opal, and brought it up in his own religious beliefs.
Opal was extremely proud of her romantic début in life, and when she had decided upon a career for herself, she wrote her autobiography up to date. As she was quite young at the time—not more than twenty-five—the book was short. She had a certain number of copies bound in specially dyed silk supposed to be of an opal tint, changeable from blue to pinkish purple, and these she gave to her friends or sold to her clients.
I say "clients," because, after being a celebrated "child medium" during her foster father's life, and then failing on the stage as an actress, she discovered that palmistry was her forte. At least it was one among several others. You told her the date when you were born, and she "did" your horoscope. She advised people also what colours they ought to wear to "suit their aura," and what jewels were lucky or unlucky. Later, when the war came, she took to crystal gazing. Perhaps she had begun it before, but it was then that she suddenly "caught on." One heard all one's friends talking about her, saying, "Have you ever been to Opal Fawcett? She'sabsolutely wonderful! You must go!" Accordingly we went.
When June and Lorillard were waiting in secret suspense for their special license, June implored Robert to let Opal look into the crystal for him, and read his hand. He tried to beg off, because he had met Miss Fawcett during her disastrous year on the stage. In a play of ancient Rome in which he was the star, Opal Fawcett had been a sort of walking-on martyr, and he had a scene with her in the arena, defending her from a doped, milk-fed lion. Opal had acted, clung, and twined so much more than necessary that Robert had disliked the scene intensely, always fearing that the audience might "queer" it by laughing. He would not complain to the management, because the girl had been given the part through official friendship, and was already marked down as prey by the critics. He hadn't wished to do her harm; but neither did he care to have his future foretold by her.
June was so keen, however, that he consented to be led like a lamb to the sacrifice. I heard from her how they went together to the old house which the spiritualist had left to his adopted daughter; and I heard what happened at the interview. June was vexed because Opalwouldsee Robert alone. She had wanted to be in the room, and listen to everything! Opal was most ungrateful, June said, because she (June) had sent lots of people to have their "hands read," and get special jewels prescribed for them, like medicines. Robert had laughed to June about what Opal claimed to see for him in her crystal, but had pretended to forget most of the "silly stuff," and be unable to repeat it. June had worried, fearing lest misfortunes had appeared in the crystal, and that Robert wished to hide the fact from her.
"I'll get it all out of Opal myself!" she exclaimed to me, and took me with her to Miss Fawcett's next day.
The excuse for this visit was to have my hand "told," and to order a mascot for Robert, to take with him to the front: his own lucky jewel set in a design made to fit his horoscope!
I was delighted to go, for I'd never seen a fortune teller; but June was too eager to talk about Robert to spare me much time with the seeress. My hand-telling was rather perfunctory, for Miss Fawcett didn't feel the same need to see me alone which she had felt with Lorillard, and June was very much on the spot, sighing, fussing, and looking at her wrist-watch.
Opal was as reticent about the interview with Lorillard as Robert had been, though, unlike him, she didn't laugh. So poor June got little for her pains, and I learned nothing about my character that Grandmother hadn't told me when she was cross. Still, it was an experience. I'd never forgotten the tall, white, angular young woman wearing amethysts and a purple robe, in a purple room: a creature who looked as if she'd founded herself on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and overshot the mark. It seemed, also, that I'd never forgotten her secretary, though perhaps I'd not thought of the girl from that day to this.
"Do tell me how you happened to be with Opal Fawcett," I couldn't help blurting out from the depths of my curiosity. "You seem so—so—absolutelyalienfrom her and her 'atmosphere'."
"Oh, it's quite simple," said Joyce Arnold, not betraying herself if she considered me intrusive or rude. "An aunt of mine—a dear old maid—was a great disciple of Mr. Fawcett. She thought Opal the wonder of the world, at about ten or twelve, as 'the child medium,' and she used to take me often to the house. I was five or six years younger than Opal, and Aunt Jenny hoped it would 'spiritualize' me to play with her. We never quite lost sight of each other after that, Opal and I. When she went into business—I mean, when she became a hand-reader and so on—I was beginning what I called my 'profession.' She engaged me as her secretary, and I stayed on till I left her to 'do my bit' in the war, as a V. A. D. That's the way I met Captain Lorillard, you know. It was the most splendid thing that ever happened, when he asked me to work for him after he was invalided back from the Front. You see, I was dead tired after four years without a rest. We'd had a lot of air raids at my hospital, and I suppose it was rather a strain. I was ordered home. And oh, it's been Paradise at that heavenly place on the river, helping to put down in black and white the beautiful thoughts of such a man!"
As she spoke, an expression of rapture, that was like light, illumined the girl's face for an instant, bright as a flash of sunshine on a white bird's wing. But it passed, and her eyes darkened with some quick memory of pain. She looked down, thick black lashes shadowing her cheeks.
"By Jove!" I thought. "There's astoryhere!"
Robert Lorillard wrote that Miss Arnold was "perfect." Yet he had sent her away. He said he was going away himself. But I felt sure he wasn't. Or else, he was going on purpose. He hadsearched the newspapers to find a place for her. If he hadn't done that deliberately, he would never have seen my advertisement.
And she? The girl was breaking her heart at the loss of her "Paradise."
What did it mean?
Joyce Arnold was ready to begin work at once.
She had, it seemed, already given up her lodgings in the village near Robert Lorillard's cottage. Opal Fawcett had offered the hospitality of her house for a fortnight, and while there Joyce would pay her way by writing Opal's letters in spare hours, the newest secretary being absent on holiday. In the meantime, now that it was decided she should come to me, Miss Arnold would look for rooms somewhere in my neighbourhood.
I let it go at this for a few days. But when just half a week had passed I realized that Joyce Arnold wasn't merely a perfect secretary, she was a perfect companion as well. Not perfect in a horrid, "high-brow" way, but simply adorable to have in the house.
It was on a Wednesday that she brought me Lorillard's letter. On the following Saturday, at luncheon, I suddenly said, "Look here, Miss Arnold, how would you like to live with me instead of in lodgings?"
She blushed with surprise. (She blushed easily and beautifully.)
"Why, I—should love it, of course," she stammered, "if you're really sure that you——"
"Of course I'm sure," I cut her short. "What I'm beginning to wonder is, how I ever got on without you!"
She laughed.
"You've known me only three days and a half! And——"
"Long enough to be sure that you're absolutely IT," said I. "If already you seem to me indispensable, howcouldRobert Lorillard have made up his mind to part with you, aftermonths?"
I didn't mean to be cruel or inquisitorial. The words sprang out—spoke themselves. But I could have boxed my own ears when I saw their effect on the girl. She grew red, then white, and tears gushed to her eyes. They didn't fall, because she was afraid to wink, and stared me steadily in the face, hoping the salt lake might safely soak back. All the same I saw that I'd struck a hard blow.
"Captain Lorillard was very nice, and really sorry in a way to lose me, I think," she replied, rather primly. "But he told you, didn't he, that he was going away?"
"Oh, of course! Stupid of me to forget for a minute," I mumbled, earnestly peeling a plum, so that she might have time to dispose of those tears without absorbing them. I was more certain than ever that here was a "story" in the broken connection between Joyce Arnold and Robert Lorillard: that if he were really leaving home it was for a reason which concernedher.
It wasn't all curiosity which made me rack my brain with mental questions. It was partly old admiration for Robert and new affection for his late secretary. "Why should he want to get rid of such a girl?" I asked myself, as at last I ate the plum.
The fruit was more easily swallowed than the idea that he hadn'twantedJoyce Arnold to go on working for him. It wouldn't be human for man or woman—especially man—notto want her. But—well—I tried to put the thought aside for the moment, in order to wrestle with it when those eyes of hers could no longer read my mind.
I turned the subject to Opal Fawcett.
"Could you leave Miss Fawcett at once, and come to me?" I asked. "Would she be vexed? Or would you rather stay with her over Sunday?"
"I could come this afternoon," Joyce said. "I'd be glad to. And I don't think Opal would mind. She wanted me at first. But—but——Well, I'm beginning to bore her now; or anyhow, we're getting on each other's nerves."
This reply, and the embarrassed look on Joyce's face, set me going upon a new track. Was Opal Fawcett in the "story" which my imagination had begun to write around Miss Arnold and Robert Lorillard? If so, what could be her part in it?
I found no satisfactory answer. Years ago, when she was on the stage and acting with Lorillard, Opal had perhaps been in love with him, like hundreds of other women. But since then he'd married, and fought in the war, and later had led the life of a hermit, while she pursued her successful "career" in town. It was unlikely that they had seen much of each other, even if their old, slight acquaintance had been kept up at all. Still, Opal might have been curious about Lorillard and the "simple life." She might have welcomed Joyce for the sake of what she could tell of him, and Joyce might have rebelled when she saw what Opal wanted from her.
I thanked my own wits for giving me this "tip." Without it, I mightn't have resisted the strong temptation to proceed with a little dextrous "pumping" on my own—just a word wedged into some chink in the armour now and then, to find out if poor Joyce had fallen a victim to Lorillard's undying charm.
As it was, I determined to shut up like a clam, and do as I would be done by were I in the girl's place. If she'd slipped into loving her employer, and he had thought best to banish her, for her own good, the wound in poor Joyce's self-respect must be as deep as that in her heart. Every sensitive nerve must throb with anguish, and only awretchwould deliberately probe the hurt with questions, in mere selfish curiosity.
"It's not your business," I said to myself. And I vowed to do all I could to make Joyce Arnold forget—whatever it was that she might want to forget.
She did come to me that afternoon. I had one spare room in my flat, and I made it as pretty and homelike as I could with flowers and books and little things I stole from my own quarters. The girl was pathetically grateful! She opened out to me like a flower—that is, in affection. I felt in her a warm, eager anxiety to serve and help me, not for the wages I gave, but for love. It was like a perfume in the place. And Joyce Arnold was intelligent as well as sweet. She had been highly educated, and there seemed to be few things she hadn't thought about. Most of the old aunt's money had been spent in making the girl what she was, so there was little left; but Joyce would always be able to earn her living.
If she tired of secretarial work, she could quite well teach music, both piano and voice production. She had taken singing lessons from a famous and successful man. Had her voice been strong enough, she might have got concert engagements, it was so honey-sweet, so exquisitely trained. But she called it a "twilight voice"; which it really was, and often I gave up going out for the joy of having her sing to me alone in the dusk.
It was only at those times that I knew—actuallyknew!—how sad she was, to the point of heartbreak. By day, when we worked or talked together, her manner was charmingly bright. She was interested in my affairs, and her quiet, delicious sense of humour was one of her greatest attractions for me. But at the piano, before the lights were on, the girl was at the mercy of her secret, whatever it might be. It came like a ghost, and stared her in the eyes. It said to her: "You can't shut me out. It is tomeyou sing. Imakeyou sing!"
To hear that "twilight voice" of hers, half crooning, half chanting, those passion-flower songs of Laurence Hope's, or "Omar," would have waked a soul in a stone image!
Good heavens! how could Robert Lorillard have sent her away? How, on the contrary, could he have helped wanting this noble, brave, sweet creature to warm his life for ever?
That's what I asked myself over and over again. And on top of that question another. What if—hehadn'thelped it?
It was one evening, while she improvised a queer little "song of sleep" for me that this thought came. It burst like a bombshell in my brain; and the reason it hadn't burst before was because my mind always pictured June and Robert together.
I was lying deep among cushions on a sofa, and involuntarily I started up.
Joyce broke off her song in the midst.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said; "only—it just popped into my head that I'd forgotten to telephone for—for a car to-morrow."
"For a car?" Joyce echoed. "How stupid of me, if you mentioned it! I can't remember——"
"No, I didn't mention it," I said. (No wonder, when I hadn't eventhoughtof it until this minute!) "But I—Imeantto. I'd made up my mind to go to 'Pergolas,' the Duchess of Stane's place on the river; you must have seen it when you were working for Robert Lorillard."
It was the first time I'd uttered his name since that impulsive break at the luncheon table, over a fortnight ago now!
Whether or not her face blushed I couldn't see in the twilight, but hervoiceblushed as she said:
"Oh, yes! I've seen—the gates. Surely the duchess isn't there at this time of the year?"
"She generally takes a 'rest cure' of a week or two at Pergolas this month. It's perfect peace, and you know how dreamlike the river is in autumn."
"I—know," Joyce murmured. "The woods all golden, and mists like creamy veils across the blue distance. I know!"
There was a passion of suppressed longing and regret in her tone.
"Wouldn't you like to go with me?" I coaxed. "It's such lovely country for a spin. And—I've never been there; but I suppose we must pass close to Robert Lorillard's cottage? We go through Stanerton village. We could stop and see if he's still at home, or if he's gone——"
"No—no, thank you, Princess," Joyce said, hastily, "I don't—care very much for motoring. If you're to be away to-morrow I'll get through some mending, and some letters of my own."
I didn't argue. I should have been surprised if she'd accepted. It would have made the thing commonplace. And it would have upset my plan. I can't call it a "deep-laid plan," because I'd laid it on no firmer foundation than the spur of the moment; but I was wildly excited about it. Fully armoured like Minerva it had leapt into my brain while I said to myself, "Whatif——?"
Joyce 'phoned to the garage where I hired cars occasionally, and ordered something to come at ten o'clock next morning. For me to take this joy ride meant throwing over a whole day's engagements like so many ninepins. But I didn't care a rap!
I could see when I was ready to start that Joyce was even more excited than I. No doubt she was thinking that, when I came back, I might bring news ofhim. We spoke, however, only of the duchess.
To me, a harmless, necessary fib isn't much more vicious than a cat of the same description; that is, if the fib is for the benefit of a friend. But I'd rather tell the truth if it can be managed, so I really intended to call on the Duchess. The village of Stanerton—on the outskirts of which Lorillard lived—happened to be on my way to Pergolas. I couldn't helpthat, could I? So I told my chauffeur to ask for River Orchard Cottage—the address on Robert's note introducing Miss Arnold.
Everyone seemed to know the place. It was half a mile out of the village, and you went to it up a side road: a very old cottage altered and modernized. The name was old, too: it really was an orchard, and it was really on the river. That was what half a dozen people informed us in a breath, and they would have added much information about Lorillard himself if I'd cared to hear. But all I wanted to learn about him from them was whether he had gone away. He hadn't. He had been seen out walking the day before.
"Itoldyou so!" I said to myself.
As the car slowed down and stopped before a white gate I seemed to lose my identity for a moment. It became merged with that of Joyce Arnold. I felt as if she—therealJoyce—had raced here in some winged vehicle of thousand-spirit power, travelling far faster than any road-bound earthly car, and, having waited for me, now slipped into my skin.
The sight of that gate made my heart beat as it must have made hers beat every day when she came in the morning to work. Yes! As I laid my hand on the latch I wasn't my somewhat blasée and sophisticated self: I was the girl to whom this place was Paradise.
The white gate was flanked by two tall clipped yews. Inside, a wide path of irregular paving-stones, with grass and flowers sprouting between, led to a low thatched cottage—oh, but a glorified cottage: a cottage that looked as if it had died and gone to heaven! The flagged path had tubs on either side. In them grew funny little Dutch treelets shaped like birds and animals of different sorts; and the lawn kept all the noble, gnarled giants that once had made it an orchard. The cottage was yellow, like cottages in Devonshire, and the old thatch had the gray satin sheen of chinchilla. A huge magnolia was trained over the front, and climbing roses and wisteria, all in the sere and yellow leaf or bare now; but I could picture the place in spring, when the diamond-paned bow windows sparkled through a canopy of flowers, when the great apple trees were like a pink-and-white sunrise of blossom, and underneath spread a carpet of forget-me-nots and tulips.
How sweet must have been the air then, how blue the river background, and how melodious the low song of a distant weir!
To-day, the air was faintly acrid with the scent of bonfire smoke—the odour of autumn; and the sounds of wind and water over the weir were sad as a song of homesickness.
I tapped an old-fashioned knocker upon a low green door. An elderly maid appeared. I saw by the bleak glint of a pale eye that she meant to say, "Not at home," and hastened to forestall her.
"See if Captain Lorillard is in, and if so tell him that Princess di Miramare has come from town on purpose for a talk with him," I flung in the stolid face.
There was no answer to that except obedience! The woman left me waiting in a delightful little square hall furnished with a very few, very beautiful, old things. And in a minute Robert Lorillard almost bounded out of a room into which the maid had vanished.
It was the first time we had seen each other since the day he married June Dana.
I had sat down on a cushioned chest in the hall. At sight of him I jumped up, and meaning to hold out a hand, found myself holding out two! He took both, pressed them, and without speaking we looked long at each other. For both of us the past had come alive.
He was the same, yet not the same. Certainly not less handsome, but changed, as all men who have been through the war are changed—anyhow, imaginative men. Though he had been back from the Front for over a year (he was invalided out after his last wound, just before the Armistice) the tan wasn't off his face yet, perhaps never would be. There were a few lines round his eyes and a few silver threads in his black hair. He smiled at me; but it was the smile of a man who has suffered, and known a hell of loneliness.
It was Robert who spoke first, saying entirely commonplace things in the beautiful voice that used to thrill London. He was so glad to see me! How nice it was of me to come! Then, suddenly, he remembered something. I couldseehim remembering. He remembered that he was supposed to be away.
"I ought to be in France," he said. "All my arrangements are made to go. Yet I haven't got off. I'm glad now that I haven't."
"So am I, very glad," I echoed. "I should have been too disappointed! But—Ifeltyou wouldn't be gone."
He looked somewhat startled.
"I always was a procrastinator," he said. "Come into my study, won't you?"
Still holding me by the hand he led me like a child into the room out of which he had shot—an adorable room, with a beamed ceiling and diamond-paned windows looking under trees to the river. In front of his desk—where he could glance up for inspiration as he wrote—was a life-sized portrait of June, by Sargent; June in the gray dress and hat she had worn the day she promised—no,offered—to marry Robert.
"You see!" he said, with a slight gesture toward the picture, with its bunched red-bronze hair and brilliant eyes of blue, "this is where I sit and work."
"And where used Joyce Arnold to sit and work?" something in me blurted out.
The man winced—just visibly—no more. His eyes flashed to mine a kind of challenge. There was sudden anger in it, and pleading as well. Then, of course, Iknew—all I had come to find out. And he must have known that I knew!
But I'd come for a great deal more than finding out.
I don't think I'm a coward, yet I was dreadfully frightened—in a blue funk of doing or saying the wrong thing at a moment when it might be "now or never." My knees felt like badly poached eggs with no toast to repose upon. I lost my head a little, and what I did I didn't do really, because it did itself.
I looked as scared as I felt, and gasped: "Oh,Robert!" (I'd never called him "Robert" to his face before; only behind his back.)
My face of fright deflected his rage. You can't be furious with a quivering jelly! But he didn't speak. The challenge in his eyes softened to reproach. Then he looked at the portrait.
"Miss Arnold sat where she, too, could see June," he answered quietly.
"Poor, poor Joyce!" I said. "And poor you!"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Why, I mean—and I, too, can see June while I say it!—I mean that you are making a terrible mistake. Oh, Robert Lorillard, don't pretend not to understand. We're not two strangers fencing! I'm not just a bold creature rushing in where angels fear to tread. I know!—Ihaverushed in, but I'm not bold. I'm frightened to death. Only—I had to come. Every day I see that glorious girl breaking her heart. She hasn't said a word, or looked a look, or wept a weep. She's asoldier. But she's like a lost soul turned out of Paradise. The more I got to know of her the more I felt youcouldn'thave sent her away and found another place for her because you were bored. So I came to see you. And you needn't mind my knowing the real reason you sent her out of your house. I won't tell her. If any one does that it must be you. And itoughtto be you. You love each other. You belong to each other. You'd be divinely happy together. You're wretched apart."
"Yousay that?" Robert exclaimed, when by sheer force of lungs I'd made him hear me through. "You—June's friend!"
"Yes. It's because I was her friend, and knew her so well, that I want you to listen to your own heart; for if you don't, you'll break Joyce Arnold's. June wouldn't want you to sacrifice your two lives on the shrine of her memory. She loved happiness, herself. And she liked other people to be happy."
Robert's eyes lit, whether with joy or anger I couldn't tell.
"You think June would be willing to have me marry another woman?" he said.
"Yes, I do, if you loved the woman. And you do love her. It would be useless to tell me you don't."
"I'm not going to tell you I don't. I've tried not to. I hoped she didn't care."
"She does. Desperately, frightfully. I do believe it's killing her."
"God! And she saved my life. Elizabeth, I'd give mine for her, a dozen times over, but——"
"What she needs is for you to give ittoher, not for her: give it once and for all, to have and to hold while your heart's in your body."
I fired advice at him like bullets from a Maxim gun, and every bullet reached its billet. I was so carried away by my wish for joy to rise from tragedy that I hardly knew what I said, yet I felt that I had caught Lorillard and carried him with me. The next thing I definitely knew with my mere brain, I was sitting down with elbows on Robert's desk, facing him as he leaned toward me. My whole self was a listening Ear, while he told—as a man hypnotized might tell the hypnotizer—the tale of his acquaintance with Joyce Arnold.
I'd already learned from his letter and from words she had let drop that Joyce had nursed him in a hospital in France, when she was "doing her bit" as a V. A. D. But she had been silent about the life-saving episode, which had won for her a decoration and Robert Lorillard's deep admiration and gratitude.
It seemed that during an air raid, when German machines were bombing the hospital, Joyce had in her ward three officers just operated upon, and too weak to walk. A bomb fell and killed one of these as Joyce and another nurse were about to move his cot into the next ward. Then, in a sudden horror of darkness and noise of destroying aeroplanes, she had carried Robert in her arms to a place of comparative safety. After that she had returned to her own ward and got the other man who lay in his cot, though her fellow nurse had been struck down, wounded or dead.
"How she did it I've never known, or she either," said Lorillard, dreaming back into the past. "She's tall and strong, of course, and at that time I was reduced to a living skeleton. Still, even in my bones I'm a good deal bigger than she is. The weight must have been enough to crush her, yet she carried me from one ward to another, in the dark, when the light had been struck out. And the wound in my side never bled a drop. It was like a miracle."
"'Spect she loved you lots already, without quite knowing it," I told him. "There've been miracles going on in the world ever since Christ, and they always will go on, because love works them, andonlylove. At least, that'smyidea! And I don't believe God would have let Joyce work that one, the way she did, if He hadn't meant her love to wake love in you."
"If I could think so," said Robert, "it would make all the difference; for I've been fighting my own heart with the whole strength of my soul, and it's been a hard struggle. I felt it would be such a hideous treachery to June—my beautiful June, who gave herself to me as a goddess might to a mortal!—the meanest ingratitude to let another woman take her place when her back is turned—even such a splendid woman as Joyce Arnold."
"I know just how you feel," I humoured him. "You remember, I was with June when she threw herself into your arms and offered to marry you. You were in love with her, and you'd never dreamed till that minute there was any hope. But that was a different love from this, I'm sure, because no two girls could be more different, one from another, than June Dana and Joyce Arnold. Your love for June was just glorious romance. Perhaps, if she'd lived, and you and she had passed years together as husband and wife, the wonderful colours of the glory would have faded a little. She tired so of every-day things. But Joyce is born to be the companion of a man she loves, and she would never tire or let him tire. You and June hardly had enough time together to realize that you were married. And it's over three years and a half since she—since the gods who loved her let her die young. She can't come to this world again. She basked in joy herself; and she won't grudge it to you, if she knows. And for you, joy and Joyce are one, for the rest of both your lives."
Lorillard sprang up suddenly and seized my hands.
"Portia come back to life and judgment—I believe you're right!" he cried. "Take me to town with you. Take me to Joyce!"
As we stood, thrilled, hand in hand, the door opened. The same servant who had let me in announced acidly: "Anotherlady to see you, sir."
The lady in question had come so near the door that she must have seen us before we could start apart.
I knew her at first glance: Opal Fawcett.
It was five years since I'd seen Opal Fawcett—for the first and last time, that day I went to her house with June.
Then she had gleamed wraithlike in the purple dusk of her purple room, with its purple-shaded lamps. Now she stood in full daylight, against the frank background of a country cottage wall. Yet she was still a mere film of a woman. She seemed to carry her own eerie effect with her wherever she went, as the heroines of operas are accompanied by their special spot-light andleitmotif.
Whether the servant was untrained, or spiteful because a long-standing rule had been broken in my favour, I can't tell. But I'm sure that, if he'd been given half a chance, Robert would have made some excuse not to see Opal. There she was, however, on the threshold, and looking like one of those "Dwellers on the Threshold" you read of in psychic books.
As he had no invisible cloak, and couldn't crawl under a sofa, poor Robert was obliged to say pleasantly, "How do you do?"
Standing back a little, trying to look about two inches tall instead of five foot ten, I watched the greeting. I wanted to judge from it, if I could, to what extent the old acquaintance had been kept up. But I might have saved myself waste of brain tissue. Robert was anxious to leave no mystery.
"Princess," he said, hastily, when he had taken his guest's slim hand in its gray glove, "Princess, I think you must have heard of Miss Opal Fawcett."
"Oh, yes. And we have met—once," I replied.
Opal's narrow gray eyes turned to me—not without reluctance I thought.
"I remember well," she murmured, in her plaintive voice. "I never forget a face. You were Miss Courtenaye then. Lately I've been hearing of you from Miss Arnold, who used to be my secretary, and is now yours."
I was thankful she didn't bring inJune'sname!
"Miss Fawcett and I have known each other a good many years," Robert hurried on. "She was once in a play with me, before she found her realmétier. She kindly comes to see me now and then, when she can take a day off."
"I want to bid you good-bye—if you are really going out of England," Opal said.
She had ceased to look at me now, but I went on looking hard at her. She was in what might be a spirit conception of a motor costume: smoke gray velvet, and yards of long, floating veil shot from gray to mauve. She wore a close toque with two little jutting Mercury wings, from behind which those yards of unnecessary chiffon fell. She had a narrow oval face, which Nature and (I thought) Art combined to make pale as pearl. Her hair, pushed forward by the toque, was so colourless a brown that it looked like thick shadow. She had a beautifully cut, delicate nose, but her lips were thin and the upper one rather long and flat, otherwise she would have been pretty. Even as it was she had a kind of fascination, and I thought her the most graceful, willowy creature I'd ever seen.
"Well," said Robert, "as it happens I've put off going abroad, through a kind of mental laziness. But in the ordinary course of events you'd have come to-day only to find me gone—which would have been a pity. When I answered your letter, I told you——"
"Yes, but Ifeltyou'd still be here," she cut him short. "Apparently the Princess had the same premonition."
"Oh, I just happened to be passing," I fibbed, "and took my chance. Fortunately, I came in the nick of time to give Captain Lorillard a lift to town in my car. It will save him a journey by train."
"Then I am in the nick of time, too!" said Opal. "If I'd been ten minutes later I might have missed him. I feltthat, too! I told my taxi man to drive at least as fast as the legal limit."
I guessed she was longing to get Robert to herself, and that he was glad there was no chance of it. Was hereallygoing abroad? she wanted to know. Or only just to London for a change?
Robert was restive under her uncanny questionings, but answered that he wasn't quite sure about the future. Travelling in France and Italy seemed to be disagreeable at the moment. Passports, too, were a bother. He'd be more certain of his plans in a few days, and would let her know.
Opal betrayed no crude emotion. Yet I was sure that, under her restrained manner—soft as a gentle breeze on a summer night—she would have enjoyed stamping her foot and having hysterics. Instead, she asked Robert about a psychic play she wanted him to write (he hadn't written a line of it!), told him a little news concerning people they both knew, and bethought herself that she "mustn't keep us."
Not more than twenty minutes after she had floated in Miss Fawcett floated forth again. Robert took her to her taxi, and then could hardly wait to get off in my car. As for me, I'd forgotten all about the Duchess. We chose the longer of the two roads to London, hoping to miss Opal; but soon passed her taxi going at a leisurely pace. The Wraith must have had another of her mystic "feelings," and counted on our choice of that turning!
"She says she has 'helpers' from beyond," Robert explained, when we were flying on, far ahead. "She asks their advice, and they tell her what to do in daily life. She wanted to provide me with one or two, but I wasn't 'taking any.' Not that I'm a convinced materialist, or that I don't believe the dark veil can ever be lifted—I'm rather inclined the other way round—but I prefer to manage my own affairs without 'helpers' I've never known or seen on earth. Of course, it would be different if——Oh, you know what I mean. But even then—well, I should be afraid of being deceived. It's better not to begin anything like that when you can't be sure."
"Did Opal Fawcett ever try to persuade you to—to——?" Courage failed me. But Robert understood only too well what was in my mind.
"Yes, she did," he admitted. "She wrote me—after—that awful thing happened. I hadn't heard from her for a long time till then. I'd almost forgotten her existence. She said in the letter that June's spirit had come to her with a message for me."
"Cheek!" I exclaimed.
"Well, I'm afraid that's rather the way I felt about it, though probably Opal meant well, and a lot of people think she's wonderful. Several friends begged me in urgent letters to go to Opal Fawcett: assured me she'd given them indescribable comfort, put them in touch with those they loved who'd 'passed on.' But somehow I couldn't be persuaded, Princess. A voice inside me always used to say: 'Why should June want to talk to you through Opal Fawcett? If she can come back, why shouldn't she speak with you direct, instead of through a third person?'"
"That's how I should have argued it out in your place," I agreed. "And—and June never——?"
"No. She never came, never made me realize her near presence, never seemed to influence me in favour of Opal—though Opal didn't give up till months had passed. When she first came after writing to say she must see me, it was to beg me to visit her forJune's sake. Afterward, when she saw she was making me uncomfortable, she stopped her persuasions. Since then—fairly often when Joyce Arnold was here—she has turned up at the cottage: sometimes just for a friendly chat like an ordinary human being (though I never feel she is one), sometimes to discuss that 'psychic play'—as she calls it—an idea of hers she wants me to work out for the stage."
"Is it a good idea?" I wanted to know.
"Yes. Mysterious and dramatic at the same time. Yet I've always made excuses. I don't fancy collaborating with Miss Fawcett, though that may sound ungrateful."
It didn't, to my ears, especially as Opal's object seemed transparent as the depths of her own crystal. Of course she was still in love with Robert, and had seized first one chance, then another, of getting into touch with him. I was rather sorry for her, in a vague, impersonal way; for to love Robert Lorillard and lose him would hurt. I could realize that, without the trouble and pain of being seriously in love with him myself.
"It's a good thing," I thought, "that Joyce Arnold's stopping with me at this time and not with Opal Fawcett! It would be as much as the girl's life is worth to be engaged to Robert inthathouse!"
Could Opal suspect, I wondered, the truth about the broken love story? Somehow I thought not. I might be mistaken, but the rather patronizing way in which she'd spoken of Joyce didn't seem like that of a jealous woman. If Joyce and she had got upon each other's nerves lately because of Robert, I imagined that suspicion had been on the other side. Joyce would have been more than human if she could go on accepting hospitality from a woman who so plainly showed her love for Robert Lorillard.
We raced back to London, for I feared that Robert's mood might change for the worse—that an autumn chill of remorse might shiver through his veins.
All was well, however—very well. I made him talk to me of Joyce nearly the whole way; and at the end of the journey I had him waiting for her in the drawing room of my flat before he quite knew what had happened to him.
My secretary was in her own room, writing her own letters as she'd said she would do.
"Back already, Princess?" she exclaimed, jumping up when I'd knocked and been told to come in. "Why, you've hardly more than had time to get there and back, it seems, to say nothing of lunch!"
"I haven't had any lunch," I said.
"No lunch? Poor darling! Why——"
"I was too busy," I broke in. "And I wanted to get back."
"Only this morning you were longing to go!"
"I know! It does sound chameleon-like. But second thoughts are often best. Come into the drawing room and you'll see that mine were—much best."
She came, in all innocence. I opened the door. I thrust her in. I exclaimed: "Bless you, my children!" and shut the two in together.
This was taking it boldly for granted that Joyce was as much in love with Robert as he with her. But why be early Victorian and ignore the lovely, naked truth, instead of late Georgian and save beating round the bush for both of the lovers?
Those words of mine figuratively flung them into each other's arms, where—according to my idea—the sooner they were the better!
I should think if my words missed fire, their eyes didn't miss, judging from what I'd seen in hers when speaking of him, in his when speaking of her! And certainly the pair of them couldn't have wastedmuchtime in foolish preliminaries; for in about half an hour Joyce appeared in the dining room, where I was eating animmenseluncheon.
"Oh, Princess!" she breathed, hovering just over the threshold; and instantly Robert loomed behind her. "It's too wonderful. It can't be true."
Robert didn't speak. He merely gazed. Years had rolled off him since morning. He looked an inspired boy, with a dash of silver powder on his hair. Slipping his arm round Joyce's waist he brought her to me. As I sat at the table they both knelt down close to my feet, and each earnestly kissed one of my hands! It would have been a beautiful effect if I hadn't choked, trying wildly to bolt a mouthful of something, and had to be slapped on the back. That choke was a disguised blessing, however, for it made us all laugh when I got my breath; and when you're on the top pinnacle of a great emotion, it's a safe outlet to laugh!
My suggestion was, that nobody but our three selves should share the secret, and that the wedding—to be hurried on—should be sprung as a surprise upon the public. Robert and Joyce agreed on general principles; but each made one exception.
Robert said that he felt it would be "caddish" to make a bid for happiness without telling the Duchess of Stane what was in his mind. She couldn't reasonably object to his marrying again, and wouldn't object, he argued; but if he didn't confide in her she'd have a right to think him a coward.
Joyce's one exception—of all people on earth!—was Opal Fawcett! And when I shrieked "Why?" she'd only say that she "owed a debt of gratitude to Opal." Therefore Opal had a right to know before any one else that she was engaged.
The girl didn't add "to Robert Lorillard," but a flash of intuition like a searchlight showed me the meaning behind her words. Living in the same house with Opal, eating Opal's bread and salt (very little else, I daresay!), Joyce had guessed Opal's secret—or had been forced to hear a confidence. That, and nothing else, was the reason why she wouldn't be engaged to Robert "behind Opal's back!"
Well, I hope I'm not precisely a coward myself, but I didn't envy Joyce Arnold and Robert Lorillard their self-appointed tasks. They were carried out, however, with soldierly promptness the day after the engagement, and nothing terrific happened—or at least, was reported.
"Opal was very sweet," Joyce announced, vouchsafing no details of the interview.
"The—Duchess was very sensible," was Robert's description of what passed between him and his exalted ex-mother-in-law.
"I suppose you asked them not to tell?" was my one question.
"Oh, Opalwon'ttell!" exclaimed Joyce; and I believed that she was right. According to Opal's view,tellingthings only helped them to happen.
"I begged the Duchess to say nothing to anybody," answered Robert. Our eyes met, and we smiled—Robert rather ruefully.
Of course the Duchess did the contrary of what she'd been begged to do, and said something to everybody. In less than a week the world was aware that Robert Lorillard, its lost idol, was coming back to life; that he who had been for a few months the husband of wonderful June Dana—the Duchess of Stane's daughter—was engaged to a "V.-A.-D. girl who'd nursed him in the war, and had been his secretary or something."
But, after all, the talk mattered very little to those most concerned. They were divinely happy, the two who were talked about, though they would have liked to be let alone. I suppose, for Robert, it was a different kind of happiness from that which the condescension of his goddess had given him: less dazzling perhaps; more like the warm sweetness of early spring and its flowers, compared with a tropical summer of scented magnolias and daturas. June had been a goddess stepping down from her golden pedestal, and Joyce was a loving, adoring human girl, ready for all that wifehood might mean.
Robert shut up the little place by the river (where they planned to live later), and stopped at an hotel in town, though he had never let the flat in St. James's Square, the scene of his engagement to June.
I began helping Joyce choose a trousseau that could be got together in haste, for they were to go to the south of France and Italy for their honeymoon; and one day, after shopping the whole morning and part of the afternoon, we were to meet Robert for tea at the Savoy.
You know that soft amber light there is in the bigfoyerof the Savoy at tea-time, like the beautiful subdued light in dreams? Since the war it brings back to me ghosts of all the jolly, handsome boys one used to see there, whose bodies sleep now under the poppies andbluetsof France; and as Joyce and I walked in, rather late, the thought of those boys and those days came over me with the sobbing music of the violins.
"It's like the beat, beat of invisible hearts," I said to myself. And suddenly I was sad.
There sat Robert, waiting for us. He had taken a table for three, and one of the chairs, I noticed, was a noble one covered with velvet brocade—a chair like a Queen's throne.
He rose at sight of us, and I saw that a little woman at a table close by was looking at him with intense interest. In fact, her interest in Robert gave her a kind of fictitious interest of her own, in my eyes, she seemed so absorbed in him.
She was one of those women you'd know to be American if you met them crawling up the North Pole; and as she was in travelling dress I fancied that it was not long since she had landed.
"She probably admired him on the stage when she was here before the war, and hasn't been in England since till now," I thought, to be interrupted by Robert himself.
"That armchair's for you, Princess," he said, as I was going to slip into a smaller one and leave the "throne" for the bride-elect.
For an instant we disputed; then I was about to yield, laughing, when the little woman in brown jumped up with a gasp.
"Oh, youcan'tsit in that chair!" she exclaimed. "Don't yousee—there's someone there?"
We all three started and stared, thinking, of course, that the creature was mad. But her face looked sane, and pathetically pleading.
"Do forgive me!" she begged. "I forget that everyone doesn't see what I see.Theyare so clear to me always. I'm not insane. But I couldn't let you sit in that chair. You may have heard of me. I am Priscilla Hay Reardon, of Boston. I can't at this moment give you the name of the lovely girl—the lady in the chair—but she would tell me, I think, if I asked her. I must describe her to you, though, she's so beautiful, and she so wants you all—no, notall; only the gentleman—to recognize her. She has red-brown hair, in glossy waves, and immense blue eyes, like violet flame. She has a dainty nose; full, drooping red lips, the upper one very short and haughty; a cleft in her chin; wonderful complexion, with rosy cheeks, the colour high under the eyes; a long throat; a splendid figure, though slim; and she is dressed in gray, with an ostrich plume trailing over a gray hat that shades her forehead. She has a string of gray pearls round her neck—blackpearls she says they are; she wears a chiffon scarf held by an emerald brooch, and on her hand is a ring with a marvellous square emerald."
Robert, Joyce, and I were speechless. The description of June was exact—June in the gray dress and hat she had worn the day we went to Robert's rooms, the day they were engaged; the dress he had made her wear when Sargent painted her portrait.
Before one of us could utter a word, the little woman hurried on.
"Ah, the lovely girl has begun to talk very fast now! I can hardly understand what she says, because she's half crying. It's to you she speaks, sir; I don't know your name! But, yes—it'sRobert... 'Robert!' the girl is sobbing. 'Have you forgotten me already?'... Do those words convey any special impression to your mind, sir, or has this spirit mistaken you for someone else?"
Robert was ghastly, and Joyce looked as if she were going to faint. Even I—to whom this scene meant less than to them—even I was flabbergasted. That is theoneword! If you don't know what it means, you're lucky, because in that case you've never been it. I should translate from experience: "Flabbergasted; astounded and bewildered at the same time, with a slight dash of premature second childhood thrown in."
I heard Robert answer in a strained voice:
"The words do convey an impression to my mind. But—this is too sacred—too private a subject. We can't discuss it here. I——"
"I know!" the woman breathlessly agreed. "Shefeels it, too. She wouldn't have chosen a place like this. She's explaining—how for a long time she's tried to reach you, but couldn't make you understand. Now I've given her the chance. She's suffering terribly because of the barrier between you. I pity her. I wish I could help! Maybe I could if you'd care to come to my rooms. I'm staying in this hotel. I've just arrived in England from Boston, the first visit in my life. I haven't been in London much more than two hours now! I've got a little suite upstairs."
If she'd got a "little suite" at the Savoy, the woman must have money. She couldn't be a common or garden medium cadging for mere fees. Besides, no common or garden person, an absolute stranger to Robert Lorillard, met by sheer accident, could have described June Dana and that gray dress of four years ago; her jewels, too! Robert's name she might have picked up if Joyce or I had let it drop by accident; but the last was inexplicable. The thing that had happened—that was happening—seemed to me miraculous, and tragic. I felt that Fate had seized the bright bird of happiness and would crush it to death, unless something intervened. And what could intervene? I struggled not to see the future as a foregone conclusion. But I could see it in no other way except by shutting my eyes.
Robert turned to Joyce. He didn't say to her, "What am I to do?" Yet she read the silent question and answered it.
"Of course you must go," she said. "It—whether it's genuine or not, you'll have to find out. You can't let it drop."
"No, I can't let it drop," he echoed. He looked stricken. He, too, saw the dark, fatal hand grasping the white bird.
He had loved June passionately, but the beautiful body he'd held in his arms lay under that sundial by the riverside. Her spirit was of another world. And he'd not have been a human, hot-blooded man, if the reproachful wraith of an old love could be more to him than the brave girl who'd saved his life and won his soul back from despair.
I saw, as if through their eyes, the thing they faced together, those two, and suddenly I rebelled against that figure of Destiny. I was wild to save the white bird before its wings had ceased to flutter. I didn't know at all what to do. But I had to do something. I simplyhadto!
Miss Reardon rose.
"Would you like to come with me now?" she asked, addressing Robert, not Joyce or me. She ignored us, but not in a rude way. Indeed, there was a direct and rather childlike simplicity in her manner, which impressed one with her genuineness. I was afraid—horribly afraid—and almost sure, that shewasgenuine. I respected her against my will, because she didn't worry to be polite; but at the same time I didn't intend to be shunted. I determined to be in at the death—or whatever it was!
"Aren't you going to invite us, too?" I asked. "If the—the apparition is the spirit we think we recognize, she and I were dear friends."
Miss Reardon's round, mild eyes searched my face. Then they turned as if to consult another face which only they could see. It was creepy to watch them gaze steadily at something in that big,emptyarmchair.
"Yes," she agreed. "The lady—Lady——Could it be 'June'?—It sounds like June—says it's true you were her friend. But she says 'Not the other.' The other mustn't come."
"I wouldn't wish to come," Joyce protested. She was waxen pale. "I'll go home," she said to Robert. "Don't bother about me. Don't think about me at all. Afterward you can—tell me whatever you care to tell."
"No!" Robert and I spoke together, moved by the same thought. "Don't go home. Wait here for us."
"Very well," the girl consented, more to save argument at such a moment, I think, than because she wished to do what we asked.
She sank down in one of the chairs we had taken and Robert and I followed Miss Reardon. She appeared to think that we were sure to know her name quite well. I didn't know it, for I was a stranger in the world of Spiritualism. But her air of being modestly proud of the name seemed to prove that her reputation as a medium was good—that she'd never been found out in any fraud. And going up in the lift the words spoke themselves over and over in my head: "She couldn't know who Robert is, if it's true she's never been in England before, and if she has come to London to-day. At least, I don't see how she could."
In silence we let Miss Reardon lead us to the sitting room of her suite on the third floor. It was small but pretty, and smelt of La France roses, though none were visible, nor were there any other flowers there. Robert and I looked at each other as this perfume rushed to meet us. La France roses were June's favourites, and belonged to the month of her birth. Robert had sent them to her often, especially when they were out of season and difficult to get.
"Sheis here, waiting for us!" exclaimed Miss Reardon. "Oh,surelyyou must see her—on the sofa, with her feet crossed—such pretty diamond buckles on her shoes!—and her lap full of roses. She holds up one rose, she kisses it, to you—Robert—Robert—some name that begins with L. I can't hear it clearly. But Robert is enough."
Yes, Robert was enough—more than enough!
Miss Reardon asked in an almost matter-of-fact way if he would like to sit down on the sofa beside June, who wished him to do so. He didn't answer; but he sat down, and his eyes stared at vacancy. I knew from their expression, however, that he saw nothing.
"What will be the next thing?" I wondered.
I had not long to wait to find out!
"Sheasks me to take your hand and hers. Then she will talk to you through me," Miss Reardon explained. As she spoke, she drew up a small chair in front of the sofa, leaned forward, took Robert's right hand in hers, and held out the left, as if grasping another hand—a hand unseen.
As the medium did this, with thin elbows resting on thin knees, she closed her eyes. A look ofblanknesscame over her face like a mist. I can't describe it in any other way. Presently her chin dropped slightly. She seemed to sleep.
Neither Robert nor I had uttered a word since we entered the room. We waited tensely.
Just what I expected to happen I hardly know, for I had no experience of "manifestations" or séances. But what did happen surprised me so that I started, and just contrived to suppress a gasp.
A voice. It did not sound like Miss Reardon's voice, with its rather pleasant American accent. It was a creamy English voice, young and full-noted. "June!" I whispered under my breath, where I sat across the length of the room from the sofa. I glanced at Robert. There was surprise on his face, and some other emotion deep as his heart. But it was not joy.
"Dearest, have you forgotten me so soon?" the voice asked. "Speak to me! It's I, your June."
It was a wrench for Robert to speak, I know. There was the pull of self-consciousness in the opposite direction—distaste for conversation with the Invisible while alien eyes watched, alien ears listened. And then, to reply as if to June, was virtually to admit that he believed in her presence, that all doubt of the medium was erased from his mind. But after a second's pause he obeyed the command.
"No," he said, "I've not forgotten and I never can forget."
"Yet you are engaged to marry this Joyce Arnold!" mourned the voice that was like June's.
I almost jumped out of my chair at the sound of Joyce's name. It was another proof that the medium was genuine.
Robert's tone as he answered was more convinced than before I thought. And the youth had died out of his eyes. They looked old.
"Do you want me to live all my life alone, now that I've lost you, June?" he asked.
"Darling, you are not alone!" answered the voice. "I'm always with you. I love you so much that I've chosen to stay near you, and be earth bound, rather than lead my own life on the plane where I might be. I thought you would want me here. I thought that some day, if I tried long enough, you would feel my touch, you would see my face. After a while I hoped I was succeeding. I looked at you from the eyes of my portrait in your study. Now and then it seemed as if youknew. But then that girl interfered. Oh, Robert, in giving up my progression from plane to plane till you could join me, has the sacrifice been all in vain?"
The voice wrung my heart. It shook as with a gust of fears. Its pleading sent little stabs of ice through my veins. So what must Robert have felt?
"No, no! The sacrifice isn't in vain!" he cried. "I didn't know, I didn't understand that those on the other side came back to us, and cared for us in the same way they cared on earth. I am yours now and always, June, of course. Order my life as you will."
"Ah, my dear one, I thank you!" The voice rose high in happiness. "I felt you wouldn't fail me if I could onlyreachyou, and at last my prayer is answered. Nothing can separate us now through eternity if you love me. You won't marry that girl?"
"Not if it is against your wish, June. It must be that you see things more clearly, where you are, than I can see them. If you tell me to break my word to Joyce Arnold, I must—I will do so."
"I tell you this, my dearest," said the voice. "If you donotbreak with her, you and I are lost to each other for ever. When I chose to be earth bound I staked everything on my belief in your love. Without it infull, I shall drift—drift, through the years, through ages, I know not how long, in expiation. Besides, I am notdead, I am more alive than I was in what you call life. You are my husband, beloved, as much as you ever were. Think what I suffer seeing another woman in your arms! My capacity for suffering is increased a thousandfold—as is my capacity for joy. If you make her your wife——"
"I will not!" Robert choked. "I promise you that. Never shall you suffer through me if I can help it."
"Darling!" breathed the voice. "My husband! How happy you make me. This is our truemarriage—the marriage of spirits. Oh, do not let the barrier rise between us again. Put Joyce Arnold out of your heart as well as your life, and talk to me every day in future. Will you do that?"
"How can I to talk to you every day?" he asked.
"As we are talking now. Through a medium. This one will not always be near you. But there will be somebody. I've often tried to get word through to you. I never could, because you wouldn'tbelieve. Now you believe, and we need not be parted again. You know the way toopen the door. It is never shut. It stands ajar. Remember!"
"I will remember," Robert echoed. And his voice was sad as the sound of the sea on a lonely shore at night. There was no warm happiness for him in the opening of a door between two worlds. The loss of Joyce was more to him than the gain of this spirit-wife who claimed him from far off as all her own. It seemed to me that a released soul should have read the truth in his unveiled heart. But perhaps it did read—and did not care.
The voice was talking on.
"I am repaid for everything now," it said. "My sacrifice is no sacrifice. For to-day I must say good-bye. Power is leaving me. I have felt too much. I must rest, and regain vitality—for to-morrow.To-morrow, Robert, my Robert! By that time we can talk with no restraint, for you will have parted with Joyce Arnold. After to-day you will never see her again?"
"No. After to-day I will never see her again, voluntarily, as that is your wish."
"Good! What time to-morrow will you talk with me?"
"At any time you name."
"At this same hour, then, in this same room."
"So be it. If the medium consents."
"I shall make her consent. And you and I will agree upon someone else to bring us together, when she must go elsewhere, as I can see through her mind that she soon must. Good-bye, dearest husband, for twenty-four long hours. Yet it isn't really good-bye, for I am seldom far from you. Now that youknow, you will feel me near. I——"
The voice seemed to fade. The last words were a faint whisper. The new sentence died as it began. The medium's eyelids quivered. Her flat breast rose and fell. The "influence" was gone!