twice,' replied Herbert cheerfully. 'And my sister, quite
by haphazard, once saw him from the garden. She was shelling peas one
evening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him shamble out of the window
here, and go shuffling along, mid-air, across the roaring washpot down
below, turn sharp round the high corner of the house, sheer against
the stars, in a kind of frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes'
concentrated watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling back
again--the same distraction, the same nebulous snuff colour, and a
candle trailing its smoke behind him as he whisked in home.'

'And then?'

'Ah, then,' said Herbert, lagging along the bookshelves, and scanning
the book-backs with eyes partially closed: he turned with lifted teapot,
and refilled his visitor's cup; 'then, wherever you are--I mean,' he
added, cutting up a little cake into six neat slices, 'wherever the
chance inmate of the room happens to be, he comes straight for you, at
a quite alarming velocity, and fades, vanishes, melts, or, as it were,
silts inside.'

Lawford listened in a curious hush that had suddenly fallen over his
mind. '"Fades inside? silts?"--I'm awfully stupid, but what on earth
do you mean?' The room had slowly emptied itself of daylight; its own
darkness, it seemed, had met that of the narrowing night, and Herbert
deliberately lit a cigarette before replying. His clear pale face, with
its smooth outline and thin mouth and rather long dark eyes, turned with
a kind of serene good-humour towards his questioner.

'Why,' he said, 'I mean frankly just that. Besides, it's Grisel's own
phrase; and an old nurse we used to have said much the same. He comes,
or IT comes towards you, first just walking, then with a kind of
gradually accelerated slide or glide, and sweeps straight into you,' he
tapped his chest, 'me, whoever it may be is here. In a kind of panic, I
suppose, to hide, or perhaps simply to get back again.'

'Get back where?'

'Be resumed, as it were, via you. You see, I suppose he is compelled to
regain his circle, or Purgatory, or Styx, whatever you like to call it,
via consciousness. No one present, then no revenant or spook, or
astral body, or hallucination: what's in a name? And of course even an
hallucination is mind-stuff, and on its own, as it were. What I mean is
that the poor devil must have some kind of human personality to get back
through in order to make his exit from our sphere of consciousnes