s darkness?"

"That is so," replied the medium, "except for materialization. For that,
darkness is essential. There's some _quality_ in darkness that They
need. They can't get the _strength_ to materialize in light conditions."

"How can we see anything if the room's pitch-black?" I persisted.

"Explain to your friends, Captain Lorillard, what takes place," bade
Miss Reardon.

"When--June comes--she brings a faint radiance with her--seems to evolve
it out of herself," Robert said in a low voice.

As he spoke he switched off the light, and profound silence fell upon
us.

Some moments passed, and nothing happened.

Joyce and I sat with locked cold hands. I was on the right of the
medium, and from my chair quite close to hers could easily have reached
out and touched her, if I'd wished. On her left, at about the same
distance, sat Robert. Jim was the only one who stood. He had refused a
chair, and propped his long length against the wall between two doors:
the door opening into the hall outside the suite, and that leading to
Miss Reardon's bedroom and bath.

We could faintly hear each other breathe. Then, after five or six
minutes, perhaps, I heard odd, gasping sounds as if someone struggled
for breath. These gasps were punctuated with moans, and I should have
been frightened if the direction and nearness of the queer noise hadn't
told me at once that it came from the medium. I'd never before been to a
materializing seance, yet I felt instinctively that this was the
convulsive sort of thing to expect.

Suddenly a dim light--oh, hardly a light!--a pale greenish glimmer, as
if there were a glowworm in the room--became faintly visible. It seemed
to swim in a delicate gauzy mist. Its height above the floor (this was
the thought flashing into my mind) was about that of a tall woman's
heart. A perfume of La France roses filled the room.

At first our eyes, accustomed to darkness, could distinguish nothing
except this glowworm light and the surrounding haze of lacy gray. Then,
gradually, we became conscious of a figure--a slender shape in floating
draperies. More and more distinct it grew, as slowly it moved toward
us--toward Robert Lorillard; and my throat contracted as I made out the
semblance of June Dana.

The form was clad in the gray dress which Miss Reardon had so
surprisingly described when we met her first--the dress June had worn
the day of her engagement--the dress of the portrait at River Orchard
Cottage