'You feel, though,' she interrupted swiftly, the passionate tenderness in her voice but half suppressed. 'I can tell it from your—'
'Others, then,' he interrupted abruptly, almost bluntly, 'have slept there—sat up, rather?'
'Not recently. My husband stopped it.' She paused a second, then added, 'I had that room—for a year—when first we married.'
The other's anguished look flew back upon her little face like a shadow and was gone, while at the sight of it there rose in himself a sudden deep rush of wonderful amazement beckoning almost towards worship. He did not speak, for his voice would tremble.
'I had to give it up,' she finished, very low.
'Was it so terrible?' after a pause he ventured.
She bowed her head. 'I had to change,' she repeated softly.
'And since then—now—you see nothing?' he asked.
Her reply was singular. 'Because I will not, not because it's gone.' … He followed her in silence to the door, and as they passed along the passage, again that curious great pain of emptiness, of loneliness, of yearning rose upon him, as of a sea that never, never can swim beyond the shore to reach the flowers that it loves …
'Hurry up, child, or a ghost will catch you,' cried her husband, leaning over the banisters, as the pair moved slowly up the stairs towards him. There was a moment's silence when they met. The guest took his lighted candle and went down the corridor. Good nights were said again.
They moved away, she to her loneliness, he to his unhaunted room. And at his door he turned. At the far end of the
