r opened with a soft,
silent suddenness, and I saw in the doorway a figure in trailing white.
Its eyes blazed in a death-white face. It made two ghostly, gliding
steps forward, and my heart stood still. I had not thought it possible
for a man to experience so sharp a pang of sheer terror. I had
masqueraded as one of the ghosts in this accursed house. Well, the other
ghost--the real one--had come to meet me. I do not like to dwell on that
moment. The only thing which it pleases me to remember is that I did not
scream or go mad. I think I stood on the verge of both.

The ghost, I say, took two steps forward; then it threw up its arms, the
lighted taper it carried fell on the floor, and it reeled back against
the door with its arms across its face.

The fall of the candle woke me as from a nightmare. It fell solidly, and
rolled away under the table.

I perceived that my ghost was human. I cried incoherently: "Don't, for
Heaven's sake--it's all right."

The ghost dropped its hands and turned agonised eyes on me. I tore off
my cloak and hat.

"I--didn't--scream," she said, and with that I sprang forward and caught
her in my arms--my poor, pink lady--white now as a white rose.

I carried her into the powdering-room, and left one candle with her,
extinguishing the others hastily, for now I saw what in my extravagant
folly had escaped me before, that my ghost exhibition might bring the
whole village down on the house. I tore down the long corridor and
double locked the doors leading from it to the staircase, then back to
the powdering-room and the prone white rose. How, in the madness of that
night's folly, I had thought to bring a brandy-flask passes my
understanding. But I had done it. Now I rubbed her hands with the
spirit. I rubbed her temples, I tried to force it between her lips, and
at last she sighed and opened her eyes.

"Oh--thank God--thank God!" I cried, for indeed I had almost feared that
my mad trick had killed her. "Are you better? oh, poor little lady, are
you better?"

She moved her head a little on my arm.

Again she sighed, and her eyes closed. I gave her more brandy. She took
it, choked, raised herself against my shoulder.

"I'm all right now," she said faintly. "It served me right. How silly it
all is!" Then she began to laugh, and then she began to cry.

It was at this moment that we heard voices on the terrace below. She
clutched at my arm in a frenzy of terror, the bright tears glistening on