ties of seeing it, of course, but somehow I never took
them--and I dislike the subject of the play greatly now."

There was a certain vehemence in his voice.

"Why?" the Canon asked. "I remember my wife was very fond of it."

"I think it morbid and dangerous. There are troubles enough in life
without adding to them such a hateful notion as a--a haunting; a
horrible thing that--" he looked round with a sort of questioning gaze
in his dark eyes--"that must be an impossibility."

"I don't know," the Canon said, without observing the glance. "I don't
know. A sin may well haunt a man."

"Perhaps. But only as a memory, not as a jingle of bells, not as a
definite noise, like a noise a man may hear in the street any day. That
must be impossible. Now--don't you say so?"

Lily, on her sofa, had noticed the very peculiar excitement of the young
doctor's manner, and that his denial was really delivered in the form of
an ardent interrogation. But the Canon's mind was not so alert after the
strain of pulpit oratory. He was calmly unaware of any personal thrill
in the discussion.

"I would not be sure," he said. "God may have what men would call
supernatural ways of punishment as well as natural ones."

"I decline to believe in the supernatural," Maurice said, rather
harshly.

"Granted that these bells might ring in a man's mind, so that he
believed that his ears actually heard them. That would be just as bad
for him."

"Then, I suppose, he is a madman," Lily said.

Maurice started round on his chair.

"That's a--a rather shocking presumption, isn't it?" he exclaimed.

"Well," the Canon said, knocking the ashes slowly out of his pipe, "if
you exclude the supernatural in such a case, and come upon the natural,
I must say I think Lily is not far wrong. The man who hears perpetually
a non-existent sound connected with some incident of his past will at
any rate soon be on the highway to insanity, I fancy."

Maurice said nothing for a moment, but Lily noticed that he looked
deeply disturbed. His lips were pressed together. His eyes shone with
excitement, and his pale forehead frowned. In the short silence that
followed on the Canon's remark, he seemed to be thinking steadfastly. At
last he lifted up his head with a jerk and said:

"A man may have a strong imagination, without being a madman, Canon. He
may choose to translate a mere memory into a sound-companion, just as
men often choose to play with their fancies in vario