e
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 the _one_ word! 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. "_She_ feels 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 pass