had provided--a faded, brown plush arm-chair--and turned
for the first time to face him and get through with the performance as
quickly as possible. And it was in that instant I got my first shock.
The man was _not_ the caretaker. It was not the old fool, Carey, I had
interviewed earlier in the day and made my plans with. My heart gave a
horrid jump.

"'Now who are _you_, pray?' I said. 'You're not Carey, the man I
arranged with this afternoon. Who are you?'

"I felt uncomfortable, as you may imagine. I was a 'psychical
researcher,' and a young woman of new tendencies, and proud of my
liberty, but I did not care to find myself in an empty house with a
stranger. Something of my confidence left me. Confidence with women, you
know, is all humbug after a certain point. Or perhaps you don't know,
for most of you are men. But anyhow my pluck ebbed in a quick rush, and
I felt afraid.

"'Who are you?' I repeated quickly and nervously. The fellow was well
dressed, youngish and good-looking, but with a face of great sadness.
I myself was barely thirty. I am giving you essentials, or I would not
mention it. Out of quite ordinary things comes this story. I think
that's why it has value.

"'No,' he said; 'I'm the man who was frightened to death.'

"His voice and his words ran through me like a knife, and I felt ready
to drop. In my pocket was the book I had bought to make notes in. I felt
the pencil sticking in the socket. I felt, too, the extra warm things
I had put on to sit up in, as no bed or sofa was available--a hundred
things dashed through my mind, foolishly and without sequence or
meaning, as the way is when one is really frightened. Unessentials
leaped up and puzzled me, and I thought of what the papers might say if
it came out, and what my 'smart' brother-in-law would think, and whether
it would be told that I had cigarettes in my pocket, and was a
free-thinker.

"'The man who was frightened to death!' I repeated aghast.

"'That's me,' he said stupidly.

"I stared at him just as you would have done--any one of you men now
listening to me--and felt my life ebbing and flowing like a sort of hot
fluid. You needn't laugh! That's how I felt. Small things, you know,
touch the mind with great earnestness when terror is there--_real
terror_. But I might have been at a middle-class tea-party, for all the
ideas I had: they were so ordinary!

"'But I thought you were the caretaker I tipped this afternoon to let me
sleep