I had not long to wait to find out!
"She asks me to take your hand and hers. Then she will talk to you through me," Miss Reardon explained. As she spoke, she drew up a small chair in front of the sofa, leaned forward, took Robert's right hand in hers, and held out the left, as if grasping another hand—a hand unseen.
As the medium did this, with thin elbows resting on thin knees, she closed her eyes. A look of blankness came over her face like a mist. I can't describe it in any other way. Presently her chin dropped slightly. She seemed to sleep.
Neither Robert nor I had uttered a word since we entered the room. We waited tensely.
Just what I expected to happen I hardly know, for I had no experience of "manifestations" or séances. But what did happen surprised me so that I started, and just contrived to suppress a gasp.
A voice. It did not sound like Miss Reardon's voice, with its rather pleasant American accent. It was a creamy English voice, young and full-noted. "June!" I whispered under my breath, where I sat across the length of the room from the sofa. I glanced at Robert. There was surprise on his face, and some other emotion deep as his heart. But it was not joy.
"Dearest, have you forgotten me so soon?" the voice asked. "Speak to me! It's I, your June."
It was a wrench for Robert to speak, I know. There was the pull of self-consciousness in the opposite direction—distaste for conversation with the Invisible while alien eyes watched, alien ears listened. And then, to reply as if to June, was virtually to admit that he believed in her presence, that all doubt of the medium was erased from his mind. But after a second's pause he obeyed the command.
"No," he said, "I've not forgotten and I never can forget."
"Yet you are engaged to marry this Joyce Arnold!" mourned the voice that was like June's.