ed to die. I felt that death would be sweet and truly desirable.
And, so thinking, I faded into a kind of coma, or rather a state which
was just short of coma. I had not lost consciousness, but I was
conscious of nothing but the gaze. "Good-bye, Rosa," I whispered; "I am
beaten, but my love has not been conquered." The next thing I remember
was the paleness of the dawn at the window. The apparition had vanished
for the night, and I was alive. But I knew that I had touched the skirts
of death. I knew that after such another night I should die.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: _The Ghost: a Novel_ (1911).]

IX

DR DUTHOIT'S VISION

By ARTHUR MACHEN[3]

I knew a fine specimen of an English abbe when I was at school at
Hereford. This was Dr Duthoit, Prebendary of _Consumpta per Sabulum_ in
Hereford Cathedral, Rector of St Owen's, bookworm and, chiefly,
rose-grower. He was a middle-aged man when I was a little boy, but he
suffered me to walk with him in his garden sloping down to the Wye, near
a pleasaunce of the Vicars Choral, reciting sometimes the poems of
Traherne, which he had in manuscript, but, for the most part,
demonstrating his progress in the art of growing a coal-black rose. This
was the true work of his life, and nearly forty years ago he could show
blooms whose copper and crimson tints were very near to utter darkness.
I believe that his ideal was never attained in absolute perfection; and
perhaps the perfect end and attainment of desire do not prove happiness
down here below.

After 1880 Prebendary Duthoit and I rarely saw each other, and rarely
wrote. He was at rest among his roses by the quiet Wye, and I dashed to
and fro in wilder waters, but each contrived to let the other know that
he was still alive, and so I was not altogether surprised to see the
Prebendary's queer, niggly writing on an envelope a week or two ago. He
said he had heard of a good deal to talk about.... Well, with a popular
legend with which I am understood to be in some way concerned, and he
thought that an odd experience of his might possibly interest me. I do
not give the text of his letter, chiefly because it is full of Latin
phrases, which I might be called upon to translate.

But the matter is as follows: On the 4th August, the day of the service
at St Paul's, Dr Duthoit was walking up and down and about that pleasant
garden on slopes of the Wye. Just above the water his gardener had
prepared under direction and instructi