d, 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--absolutely _alien_ from 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 a _story_ here!"

Robert Lorillard wrote that Miss Arnol