ur
adventures with the seance-mongers years ago? ... I have not changed
my view so far as their evidential value is concerned. Be sure of
that.

The dead, I am of opinion, do not return; for, while individuals may
claim startling experiences that seem to them of an authentic and
convincing kind, there has been no instance that can persuade us
all--in the sense that thunderstorm convinces us all. Such individual
experiences I have always likened to the auto-suggestion of those few
who believe the advertisements of the hair-restorers--you will forgive
the unpoetic simile for the sake of its exactitude--as against the
verdict of the world that a genuine discovery of such a remedy would
leave no single doubter in Europe or America, nor even in the London
Clubs! Yet each time I read the cunning article (I have less hair
than when I ran away from Sandhurst that exciting July night and met
you in the Strand!), and look upon the picture of the man, John Henry
Smith, "before and after using," I admit the birth of an unreasonable
belief that there may be something in it after all.

Of such indubitable proof, however, there is, alas, as yet no sign.

And so with the other matter--the dead do not "return." My story,
therefore, be comforted, has no individual instance to record. It
may, on the other hand, be held to involve a thread of what might be
called--at a stretch--posthumous communication, yet a thread so
tenuous that the question of personal direction behind it need hardly
be considered at all. For let me confess at once that, the habit of
the "thrill" once established, I was not long in asking myself point
blank this definite question: Dared I trace its origin to my own
unfruitful experience of some years before?--and, discovering no
shred of evidence, I found this positive answer: Honestly I could
not.

That "somebody was pleased" each time Beauty offered a wisdom I
accepted, became an unanswerable conviction I could not argue about;
but that the guidance--waking a responsive emotion in myself of
love--was referable to any particular name I could not, by any
stretch of desire or imagination, bring myself to believe.

Marion, I must emphasise, had been gone from me five years at least
before the new emotion gave the smallest hint of its new birth; and
my feeling, once the first keen shame and remorse subsided--I confess
to the dishonouring truth--was one of looking back upon a painful
problem that had found an unexp