“She’ll be all right presently. She’ll come back. It’s just that she is so interested. Ever since her brother, Jack Hilles, was killed, she’s been trying to ‘get through’ to him; and she can’t do it herself. She began going to a medium, and the woman had no sooner established communication for her than she died. Now, Fanny’s rather up against it. She’s not the kind that likes to go to mediums, you know. I’m awfully sorry you started the subject.” “Why didn’t you stop us, if you knew all that?” Ben queried. “I didn’t. She just told me about the medium now. Oh, she’ll pull herself together all right. It may do her good to have it out with a sensible crowd like this. We didn’t put it into her head. It’s there all the time--has been, ever since Jack Hilles was killed in the Argonne.” “Well, we’ll drop it right here,” Allis replied. But Mrs. Medford was back among us and heard him. “You won’t drop anything on my account, I hope. Maud may have told you it’s the one thing I’m interested in. It’s just awfully hard luck that I can’t do anything by myself. If you people really feel like trying anything, don’t let me stop you. I daresay the rest of you are as bad as I am, anyway. Not ‘psychic’--though Mrs. Conway says there’s nothing in that.” “There isn’t,” Mrs. Conway averred again. “Let’s try it, anyhow,” cried young Carter. “Not table-tipping. Let’s sit about and turn the lights out and each take a pencil, and see if we can do automatic writing.” Fanny Medford clapped her hands. “Oh, do! Only, of course, I can’t. But perhaps”--she looked us over hungrily--“some of you can, and I might get a tip as to the right way to manage. And, anyway, it’s so interesting.” Certainly she had recovered. “I’m not going to sit with the lights out all the evening,” grumbled Allis. “This was supposed to be, in its humble way, a dinner-party.” “Well, of course, not all the evening,” Maud conceded. “Quarter of an hour. And then we’ll stop and play bridge.” “It would be rather fun.” This was Genevieve Ford. I have not mentioned Miss Ford before, simply because she had taken no part in the conversation that I have detailed. She happened to you, once in so often, in somebody’s house, and you didn’t much care, one way or the other. She was just a nice girl, a little more restful than some, perhaps. I think the Allises hoped against hope that some day she and Carter.... I don’t know why. Somehow, Miss Ford’s quiet speech clinched it. Perhaps because she had been an outsider through the talk. “Good for you. Let’s!” Carter dashed to Ben’s table and swept some pencils off it. “Paper, Allis? And more pencils. We’ll scatter about through the rooms so that everyone can have a table-edge or a chair-arm.” Allis found us pads of paper and pencils--all except Mrs. Conway, who refused to join us and went off to fetch her knitting. We all looked at each other rather helplessly. “How do you begin?” I asked.