dreadful with alarm--and in that instant the last veil fell, and
desperately, scarce believingly, I beheld how it stood between them,
those two.

She turned to him that gentle look of hers.

"Forgive me," came from him hoarsely. "But I had suddenly the
most--unaccountable sensation. Can there be too many windows open? There
is such a--chill--about."

"There are no windows open," Theresa assured him. "I took care to shut
out the chill. You are not well, Allan!"

"Perhaps not." He embraced the suggestion. "And yet I feel no illness
apart from this abominable sensation that persists--persists....
Theresa, you must tell me: do I fancy it, or do you, too,
feel--something--strange here?"

"Oh, there is something very strange here," she half sobbed. "There
always will be."

"Good heavens, child, I didn't mean that!" He rose and stood looking
about him. "I know, of course, that you have your beliefs, and I respect
them, but you know equally well that I have nothing of the sort!
So--don't let us conjure up anything inexplicable."

I stayed impalpably, imponderably near him. Wretched and bereft though I
was, I could not have left him while he stood denying me.

"What I mean," he went on, in his low, distinct voice, "is a special, an
almost ominous sense of cold. Upon my soul, Theresa,"--he paused--"if I
_were_ superstitious, if I _were_ a woman, I should probably imagine it
to seem--a presence!"

He spoke the last word very faintly, but Theresa shrank from it
nevertheless.

"_Don't_ say that, Allan!" she cried out. "Don't think it, I beg of you!
I've tried so hard myself not to think it--and you must help me. You
know it is only perturbed, uneasy spirits that wander. With her it is
quite different. She has always been so happy--she must still be."

I listened, stunned, to Theresa's sweet dogmatism. From what blind
distances came her confident misapprehensions, how dense, both for her
and for Allan, was the separating vapor!

Allan frowned. "Don't take me literally, Theresa," he explained; and I,
who a moment before had almost touched him, now held myself aloof and
heard him with a strange untried pity, new born in me. "I'm not speaking
of what you call--spirits. It's something much more terrible." He
allowed his head to sink heavily on his chest. "If I did not positively
know that I had never done her any harm, I should suppose myself to be
suffering from guilt, from remorse.... Theresa, you know better than I,