means." Mrs.
Wessington leaned forward, with that odd, quick turn of the head I used
to know so well, and spoke.

If my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all human
belief I should apologize to you now. As I know that no one--no, not
even Kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of justification of
my conduct--will believe me, I will go on. Mrs. Wessington spoke and
I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road to the turning below the
Commander-in-Chief's house as I might walk by the side of any living
woman's 'rickshaw, deep in conversation. The second and most tormenting
of my moods of sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the
Prince in Tennyson's poem, "I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts."
There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief's, and we two
joined the crowd of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them then it seemed
that _they_ were the shadows--impalpable, fantastic shadows--that
divided for Mrs. Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. What we said
during the course of that weird interview I cannot--indeed, I dare
not--tell. Heatherlegh's comment would have been a short laugh and a
remark that I had been "mashing a brain-eye-and-stomach chimera." It was
a ghastly and yet in some indefinable way a marvelously dear experience.
Could it be possible, I wondered, that I was in this life to woo a
second time the woman I had killed by my own neglect and cruelty?

I met Kitty on the homeward road--a shadow among shadows.

If I were to describe all the incidents of the next fortnight in their
order, my story would never come to an end; and your patience would be
exhausted. Morning after morning and evening after evening the ghostly
'rickshaw and I used to wander through Simla together. Wherever I went
there the four black and white liveries followed me and bore me company
to and from my hotel. At the Theatre I found them amid the crowd or
yelling _jhampanies_; outside the Club veranda, after a long evening of
whist; at the Birthday Ball, waiting patiently for my reappearance; and
in broad daylight when I went calling. Save that it cast no shadow, the
'rickshaw was in every respect as real to look upon as one of wood and
iron. More than once, indeed, I have had to check myself from warning
some hard-riding friend against cantering over it. More than once I have
walked down the Mall deep in conversation with Mrs. Wessington to the
unspeakable amazement of the passers-by.

Be