"Hello," said Guy, "your palmist has given me a list of guests for whom she wants to gaze. Here it is! You're first on the paper, Britton. See? Now go along and get through while I bring your successor."
He pushed Rex inside and closed the door, taking his aunt away with him.
"Now was that name on the list coincidence or design?" Britton asked himself before he came to the end of the conservatory's corridor.
One corner of the cool place had been curtained off with blue silk hangings as a retreat for the spiritualist. Her tiny tent was closed and lighted from within by a red-globed lamp which gave a subdued effect. The pavilion was arranged thus to give the palmist the advantage of illumination while her subject stood outside in partial darkness.
Rex felt awkward and ill at ease at the weighty sense of desolation which filled the long, empty conservatory. His footsteps paused uncertainly, but the waiting priestess heard them.
"Come closer please," she said in a muffled tone that sounded disguised.
Britton obeyed the summons with an increasing sensation of awkwardness for which he was at a loss to account. He stood so near the soft curtains that they brushed his body without weight, like fine cobwebs, and he could perceive a small horizontal slit in the pavilion's side which was not noticeable before. Set back of it, so as to block the vision and prevent an inspection of the interior, was a Japanese screen in weird colors.
His mind was filled with an irritation aroused by the feminine whim that had sent him to this place. The whole environment jarred on him as possessing an illusion disproportionate to his mental vision.
"Well?" he demanded in a voice which set the responsibility for his coming on the head of the person within the gaudy pavilion.
There was a noise inside that seemed like a smothered exclamation of surprise together with a vague rustle of woman's garments, and the same muffled tone as before became audible, though it seemed shaken and difficult to control.