e
fallen asleep in my chair.

"I awoke, and instantly there flashed through my mind the thought of the
kerchief the woman had left behind her, and I started from my chair to
hide it. But the table was already laid for breakfast, and my wife sat
with her elbows on the table and her head between her hands, watching me
with a look in her eyes that was new to me.

"She kissed me, though her lips were a little cold, and I argued to
myself that the whole thing must have been a dream. But later in the
day, passing the open door when her back was towards me, I saw her take
the kerchief from a locked chest and look at it.

"I have told myself it must have been a kerchief of her own, and that
all the rest has been my imagination--that if not, then my strange
visitant was no spirit, but a woman, and that, if human thing knows
human thing, it was no creature of flesh and blood that sat beside me
last night. Besides, what woman would she be? The nearest saeter is a
three hours' climb to a strong man, the paths are dangerous even in
daylight: what woman would have found them in the night? What woman
would have chilled the air around her, and have made the blood flow cold
through all my veins? Yet if she come again I will speak to her. I will
stretch out my hand and see whether she be mortal thing or only air."

_The fifth letter:_

"My dear Joyce,--Whether your eyes will ever see these letters is
doubtful. From this place I shall never send them. They would read to
you as the ravings of a madman. If ever I return to England I may one
day show them to you, but when I do it will be when I, with you, can
laugh over them. At present I write them merely to hide away--putting
the words down on paper saves my screaming them aloud.

"She comes each night now, taking the same seat beside the embers, and
fixing upon me those eyes, with the hell-light in them, that burn into
my brain; and at rare times she smiles, and all my Being passes out of
me, and is hers. I make no attempt to work. I sit listening for her
footsteps on the creaking bridge, for the rustling of her feet upon the
grass, for the tapping of her hand upon the door. No word is uttered
between us. Each day I say: 'When she comes to-night I will speak to
her. I will stretch out my hand and touch her.' Yet when she enters, all
thought and will goes out from me.

[Illustration: "I STOOD GAZING AT HER."]

"Last night, as I stood gazing at her, my sou