gone very far. I was taking her hand and calling her 'Margaret,
dear Margaret!' She had said it was impossible, that she could do
nothing, that she was a fool, a child, a slave. Then with a sudden
sense--it was odd how it came over me there--of the reality of my
connexion with the place, I spoke of my claim against the estate. 'It
exists,' I declared, 'but I've given it up. Be generous! Pay me for my
sacrifice.' For an instant her face was radiant. 'If I marry you,'
she asked, 'will it make everything right?' Of that I at once assured
her--in our marriage the whole difficulty would melt away like a
rain-drop in the great sea. 'Our marriage!' she repeated in wonder; and
the deep ring of her voice seemed to wake us up and show us our folly.
'I love you, but I shall never see you again,' she cried; and she
hurried away with her face in her hands. I walked up and down the
terrace for some moments, and then came in and met you. That's the only
witchcraft I've used!"

The poor man was at once so roused and so shaken by the day's events
that I believed he would get little sleep. Conscious on my own part that
I shouldn't close my eyes, I but partly undressed, stirred my fire
and sat down to do some writing. I heard the great clock in the little
parlour below strike twelve, one, half-past one. Just as the vibration
of this last stroke was dying on the air the door of communication with
Searle's room was flung open and my companion stood on the threshold,
pale as a corpse, in his nightshirt, shining like a phantom against the
darkness behind him. "Look well at me!" he intensely gasped; "touch me,
embrace me, revere me! You see a man who has seen a ghost!"

"Gracious goodness, what do you mean?"

"Write it down!" he went on. "There, take your pen. Put it into dreadful
words. How do I look? Am I human? Am I pale? Am I red? Am I speaking
English? A ghost, sir! Do you understand?"

I confess there came upon me by contact a kind of supernatural shock. I
shall always feel by the whole communication of it that I too have seen
a ghost. My first movement--I can smile at it now--was to spring to the
door, close it quickly and turn the key upon the gaping blackness from
which Searle had emerged. I seized his two hands; they were wet with
perspiration. I pushed my chair to the fire and forced him to sit down
in it; then I got on my knees and held his hands as firmly as possible.
They trembled and quivered; his eyes were fixed save that th