that minute there
was any hope. But that was a different love from this, I'm sure, because
no two girls could be more different, one from another, than June Dana
and Joyce Arnold. Your love for June was just glorious romance. Perhaps,
if she'd lived, and you and she had passed years together as husband and
wife, the wonderful colours of the glory would have faded a little. She
tired so of every-day things. But Joyce is born to be the companion of a
man she loves, and she would never tire or let him tire. You and June
hardly had enough time together to realize that you were married. And
it's over three years and a half since she--since the gods who loved her
let her die young. She can't come to this world again. She basked in joy
herself; and she won't grudge it to you, if she knows. And for you, joy
and Joyce are one, for the rest of both your lives."

Lorillard sprang up suddenly and seized my hands.

"Portia come back to life and judgment--I believe you're right!" he
cried. "Take me to town with you. Take me to Joyce!"

As we stood, thrilled, hand in hand, the door opened. The same servant
who had let me in announced acidly: "_Another_ lady to see you, sir."

The lady in question had come so near the door that she must have seen
us before we could start apart.

I knew her at first glance: Opal Fawcett.

CHAPTER III

THE CHAIR AT THE SAVOY

It was five years since I'd seen Opal Fawcett--for the first and last
time, that day I went to her house with June.

Then she had gleamed wraithlike in the purple dusk of her purple room,
with its purple-shaded lamps. Now she stood in full daylight, against
the frank background of a country cottage wall. Yet she was still a mere
film of a woman. She seemed to carry her own eerie effect with her
wherever she went, as the heroines of operas are accompanied by their
special spot-light and _leitmotif_.

Whether the servant was untrained, or spiteful because a long-standing
rule had been broken in my favour, I can't tell. But I'm sure that, if
he'd been given half a chance, Robert would have made some excuse not to
see Opal. There she was, however, on the threshold, and looking like one
of those "Dwellers on the Threshold" you read of in psychic books.

As he had no invisible cloak, and couldn't crawl under a sofa, poor
Robert was obliged to say pleasantly, "How do you do?"

Standing back a little, trying to look about two inches tall instead of
five foot ten, I wat