presentiment that Smith, smart as he was,
would get hold of little to help us, if anything. Yet at the same time I
felt that there _was_ something to get hold of--somewhere!

If I hadn't implored them to wait, Joyce and Robert would have decided
to publish the news that their marriage (which somehow everyone knew
about!) would "not take place." This concession they did make to me; but
they agreed together that they mustn't meet. My cheerful flat felt like
a large grave fitted with all modern conveniences, when it had been
deprived of Robert. And Joyce trying to be normal and not to shed gloom
over me, her employer, was _too_ agonizing!

Robert didn't even write to Joyce. I suppose he couldn't trust himself.
But he wrote to me, and gave the history of his second interview with
Miss Reardon. June had come again, and had reminded him of incidents
about which, he said, "no outsider could possibly know."

"I can't help believing now that there are more things in heaven and
earth than I'd dreamed of in my philosophy," he ended his letter.
"There's no getting round the fact that what I should have thought a
miracle has happened. The spirit of June has claimed me from the 'other
side.' And even if I were brutal enough, disloyal enough, to disown the
claim, to pretend to Joyce and myself that I _didn't_ believe, neither
Joyce nor I could have a moment's happiness, married. She knows that as
well as I do. As my wife her life would be spoiled. June would always
stand between us, separating us one from the other. I think I should be
driven mad. Joyce's heart would be broken!

"I've promised to talk with June through a medium every day. Miss
Reardon has to leave London in a fortnight, but June's voice asked me to
go to Opal Fawcett. You remember my telling you that Opal suggested this
long ago, saying that June wanted to get in touch with me? I wouldn't
hear of it then, because at that time I had no reason to believe in the
genuineness of visits from one world to another. Now it's different. I
shall go to Opal.

"Tell Joyce that I'll write her to-night. It won't be a letter such as I
should wish to write. But she will understand."

Yes, she would understand! One could always trust Joyce to understand,
even if she were on the rack!

It was the next day--the third day after the unforgettable one at the
Savoy--when my tame detective brought his budget. He would have come
even sooner, he said, if there hadn't been a delay in the