She rapped, and there was a discussion within.  “They’re at it already, I believe,” she said to Lewisham confidentially.  “Mr. Lagune’s always at it.”

There were sounds of chairs being moved, Smithers’ extensive voice making a suggestion and laughing nervously.  Lagune appeared opening the door.  His grizzled face seemed smaller and his big grey eyes larger than usual.

“We were just going to begin without you,” he whispered.  “Come along.”

The room was furnished even more finely than the drawing-room of the Whortley Grammar School, hitherto the finest room (except certain of the State Apartments at Windsor) known to Lewisham.  The furniture struck him in a general way as akin to that in the South Kensington Museum.  His first impression was an appreciation of the vast social superiority of the chairs; it seemed impertinent to think of sitting on anything quite so quietly stately.  He perceived Smithers standing with an air of bashful hostility against a bookcase.  Then he was aware that Lagune was asking them all to sit down.  Already seated at the table was the Medium, Chaffery, a benevolent-looking, faintly shabby gentleman with bushy iron-grey side-whiskers, a wide, thin-lipped mouth tucked in at the corners, and a chin like the toe of a boot.  He regarded Lewisham critically and disconcertingly over gilt glasses.  Miss Heydinger was quite at her ease and began talking at once.  Lewisham’s replies were less confident than they had been in the Gallery of Old Iron; indeed there was almost a reversal of their positions.  She led and he was abashed.  He felt obscurely that she had taken an advantage of him.  He became aware of another girlish figure in a dark dress on his right.

Everyone moved towards the round table in the centre of the room, on which lay a tambourine and a little green box.  Lagune developed unsuspected lengths of knobby wrist and finger directing his guests to their seats.  Lewisham was to sit next to him, between him and the Medium; beyond the Medium sat Smithers with Miss Heydinger on the other side of him, linked to Lagune by the typewriter.  So sceptics compassed the Medium about.  The company was already seated before Lewisham looked across Lagune and met the eyes of the girl next that gentleman.  It was Ethel!  The close green dress, the absence of a hat, and a certain loss of colour made her seem less familiar, but did not prevent the instant recognition.  And there was recognition in her eyes.

Immediately she looked away.  At first his only emotion was surprise.  He would have spoken, but a little thing robbed him of speech.  For a moment he was unable to remember her surname.  Moreover, the strangeness of his surroundings made him undecided.  He did not know what was the proper way to address her—­and he still kept to the superstition of etiquette.  Besides—­to speak to her would involve a general explanation to all these people ...

“Just leave a pin-point of gas, Mr. Smithers, please,” said Lagune, and suddenly the one surviving jet of the gas chandelier was turned down and they were in darkness.  The moment for recognition had passed.