It was actually from her secretary, the Clara who had recorded the seances.  It was Mrs. Dane’s misfortune to be almost entirely dependent on the various young women who, one after the other, were employed to look after her.  I say “one after the other” advisedly.  It had long been a matter of good-natured jesting in the Neighborhood Club that Mrs. Dane conducted a matrimonial bureau, as one young woman after another was married from her house.  It was her kindly habit, on such occasions, to give the bride a wedding, and only a month before it had been my privilege to give away in holy wedlock Miss Clara’s predecessor.

“Mrs. Dane would like you to stop in and have a cup of tea with her this afternoon, Mr. Johnson,” said the secretary.

“At what time?”

“At four o’clock.”

I hesitated.  I felt that my wife was waiting at home for further explanation of the coal-tongs, and that the sooner we had it out the better.  But, on the other hand, Mrs. Dane’s invitations, by reason of her infirmity, took on something of the nature of commands.

“Please say that I will be there at four,” I replied.

I bought a new hat that afternoon, and told the clerk to destroy the old one.  Then I went to Mrs. Dane’s.

She was in the drawing-room, now restored to its usual clutter of furniture and ornaments.  I made my way around two tables, stepped over a hassock and under the leaves of an artificial palm, and shook her hand.

She was plainly excited.  Never have I known a woman who, confined to a wheel-chair, lived so hard.  She did not allow life to pass her windows, if I may put it that way.  She called it in, and set it moving about her chair, herself the nucleus around which were enacted all sorts of small neighborhood dramas and romances.  Her secretaries did not marry.  She married them.

It is curious to look back and remember how Herbert and Sperry and myself had ignored this quality in her, in the Wells case.  She was not to be ignored, as I discovered that afternoon.

“Sit down,” she said.  “You look half sick, Horace.”

Nothing escapes her eyes, so I was careful to place myself with the lump on my head turned away from her.  But I fancy she saw it, for her eyes twinkled.

“Horace!  Horace!” she said.  “How I have detested you all week!”

“I?  You detested me?”

“Loathed you,” she said with unction.  “You are cruel and ungrateful.  Herbert has influenza, and does not count.  And Sperry is in love —­oh yes, I know it.  I know a great many things.  But you!”

I could only stare at her.

“The strange thing is,” she went on, “that I have known you for years, and never suspected your sense of humor.  You’ll forgive me, I know, if I tell you that your lack of humor was to my mind the only flaw in an otherwise perfect character.”

“I am not aware—­” I began stiffly.  “I have always believed that I furnished to the Neighborhood Club its only leaven of humor.”