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 you _know_, 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!

CHAPTER V

THE BARGAIN

That night was one of the worst in my life. I was so fond of Robert
Lorillard, and I'd grown to love Joyce Arnold so well that the breaking
of their love idyll hurt as if it had been my own.

Never shall I forget the hour when we three talked together at my flat
after that seance at the Savoy, or the look on those two faces as Robert
and Joyce agreed to part! Even I had acquiesced at first in that
decision--but only while I was still half stunned by the shock of the
great surprise, and thrilled by the seeming miracle. At sight of the two
I loved quietly giving each other up, making sacrifice of their hearts
on a cold altar, I had a revulsion of feeling.

I jumped up, and broke out desperately.

"I don't believe it's true! Something _tells_ me it isn't! Don't spoil
your lives without making sure."

"How can we be surer than we are?" Robert asked. "You recognized June's
voice."

"I _thought_ then that I did," I amended. "I was excited. Now, I don't
trust my own impression."

"But the perfume of La France roses? Even if the woman could have found
out other things, how should she know about a small detail like June's
favourite flower? How could she have the perfume already in her room
when we came--as if she were sure of our coming there--which of course
she couldn't have been," Robert argued.

"I don't _see_ how she could have been sure," I had to grant him. "I
don't see through any of it. But they're so deadly clever, these
people--the fraudulent ones, I mean. They couldn't impress the public as
they do if they weren't up to every trick. All I say is, _wait_. Don't
decide irrevocably yet. The way the voice talked didn't seem to me a bit
like June. Only the tones were like hers; and they might have been
imitated by anybody wh