t or spiritual manifestation of some kind which moved in this silent
way. In order to see and hear better, I softly moved back the folding
grille, opened the French window, and stepped out, bare-footed and
pyjama-clad as I was, on the marble terrace. How cold the wet marble
was! How heavy smelled the rain-laden garden! It was as though the
night and the damp, and even the moonlight, were drawing the aroma from
all the flowers that blossomed. The whole night seemed to exhale heavy,
half-intoxicating odours! I stood at the head of the marble steps, and
all immediately before me was ghostly in the extreme--the white marble
terrace and steps, the white walks of quartz-sand glistening under the
fitful moonlight; the shrubs of white or pale green or yellow,--all
looking dim and ghostly in the glamorous light; the white statues and
vases. And amongst them, still flitting noiselessly, that mysterious
elusive figure which I could not say was based on fact or imagination. I
held my breath, listening intently for every sound; but sound there was
none, save those of the night and its denizens. Owls hooted in the
forest; bats, taking advantage of the cessation of the rain, flitted
about silently, like shadows in the air. But there was no more sign of
moving ghost or phantom, or whatever I had seen might have been--if,
indeed, there had been anything except imagination.

So, after waiting awhile, I returned to my room, closed the window, drew
the grille across again, and dragged the heavy curtain before the
opening; then, having extinguished my candles, went to bed in the dark.
In a few minutes I must have been asleep.

"What was that?" I almost heard the words of my own thought as I sat up
in bed wide awake. To memory rather than present hearing the disturbing
sound had seemed like the faint tapping at the window. For some seconds
I listened, mechanically but intently, with bated breath and that quick
beating of the heart which in a timorous person speaks for fear, and for
expectation in another. In the stillness the sound came again--this time
a very, very faint but unmistakable tapping at the glass door.

I jumped up, drew back the curtain, and for a moment stood appalled.

There, outside on the balcony, in the now brilliant moonlight, stood a
woman, wrapped in white grave-clothes saturated with water, which dripped
on the marble floor, making a pool which trickled slowly down the wet
steps. Attitude and dress and