name she now bore was a name frequently borne, and since moreover her
judicial separation, as things were going, could hardly count as a
distinction, it was usual to qualify her as "the one, you know, who saw
her father's ghost."

As for him, dear man, he had seen his mother's. I had never heard of
that till this occasion on which our closer, our pleasanter acquaintance
led him, through some turn of the subject of our talk, to mention it and
to inspire me in so doing with the impulse to let him know that he had a
rival in the field--a person with whom he could compare notes. Later
on his story became for him, perhaps because of my unduly repeating it,
likewise a convenient wordly label; but it had not a year before been
the ground on which he was introduced to me. He had other merits, just
as she, poor thing! had others. I can honestly say that I was quite
aware of them from the first--I discovered them sooner than he
discovered mine. I remember how it struck me even at the time that his
sense of mine was quickened by my having been able to match, though not
indeed straight from my own experience, his curious anecdote. It dated,
this anecdote, as hers did, from some dozen years before--a year in
which, at Oxford, he had for some reason of his own been staying on into
the "Long." He had been in the August afternoon on the river. Coming
back into his room while it was still distinct daylight he found his
mother standing there as if her eyes had been fixed on the door. He had
had a letter from her that morning out of Wales, where she was staying
with her father. At the sight of him she smiled with extraordinary
radiance and extended her arms to him, and then as he sprang forward
and joyfully opened his own she vanished from the place. He wrote to her
that night, telling her what had happened; the letter had been carefully
preserved. The next morning he heard of her death. He was through this
chance of our talk extremely struck with the little prodigy I was able
to produce for him. He had never encountered another case. Certainly
they ought to meet, my friend and he; certainly they would have
something in common. I would arrange this, wouldn't I?--if _she_ didn't
mind; for himself he didn't mind in the least. I had promised to speak
to her of the matter as soon as possible, and within the week I was able
to do so. She "minded" as little as he; she was perfectly willing to
see him. And yet no meeting was to occur--as meetin