“How can I?” she faltered.
“Try,” he urged masterfully—“try and get that message again.” His hands were so cold they ached. Sweat ran on his brow. But his voice was firm, his eyes imperative, compelling.
“I can’t,” Helen said piteously.
“You must, I tell you, you must.” He stamped his foot in his insistence.
“Stephen, you frighten me,” she said, shrinking.
“Try, Helen, try.” He whispered it gently, soothingly.
Like some beautiful, breathing marionette, she rose slowly, very slowly, pressed one hand over her eyes—stood rigid, but swaying, poised for motion, tuned for revelation—for receiving and transmitting a message.
Stephen Pryde watched her with straining eyes. His gasping breath froze on his stiffening lips. He put out one daring hand, and just touched her sleeve. At that touch some negative current seemed to sweep and surge through her. She recoiled, she shuddered, and then she relaxed from all her intensity, and sank wearily down into the nearest chair, saying dully—
“I can’t Stephen, I can’t!”
The banished blood leapt back to his face, and laughed in his heart, danced through his veins. His whole attitude was changed in one flash of time; the attitude of his flesh, the attitude of his mind. Helen had failed. The thing she had hoped, he had feared and defied, could not be done. It was farce. It was fraud—fraud worked on them by their caitiff nerves, as “fortunes” forsooth were told for a “bob” by old crones, from tea leaves—on the Brixton Road. And almost he had been persuaded, he, Stephen Pryde! Pshaw! Well, his fears were done for and past now once for all. The dead man could not reach her! The dead man; a handful of dust or of rot in a grave!