slumbers--and
she seemed to think I could tell her why! Thus a poor mortal seduced by
the charm of an apparition might have tried to wring from another
ghost the tremendous secret of the claim the other world holds over a
disembodied soul astray amongst the passions of this earth. The very
ground on which I stood seemed to melt under my feet. And it was so
simple too; but if the spirits evoked by our fears and our unrest have
ever to vouch for each other's constancy before the forlorn magicians
that we are, then I--I alone of us dwellers in the flesh--have shuddered
in the hopeless chill of such a task. A sign, a call! How telling in its
expression was her ignorance. A few words! How she came to know them,
how she came to pronounce them, I can't imagine. Women find their
inspiration in the stress of moments that for us are merely awful,
absurd, or futile. To discover that she had a voice at all was enough
to strike awe into the heart. Had a spurned stone cried out in pain it
could not have appeared a greater and more pitiful miracle. These few
sounds wandering in the dark had made their two benighted lives tragic
to my mind. It was impossible to make her understand. I chafed silently
at my impotence. And Jim, too--poor devil! Who would need him? Who would
remember him? He had what he wanted. His very existence probably had
been forgotten by this time. They had mastered their fates. They were
tragic.

'Her immobility before me was clearly expectant, and my part was to
speak for my brother from the realm of forgetful shade. I was deeply
moved at my responsibility and at her distress. I would have given
anything for the power to soothe her frail soul, tormenting itself in
its invincible ignorance like a small bird beating about the cruel
wires of a cage. Nothing easier than to say, Have no fear! Nothing more
difficult. How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre
through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral
throat? It is an enterprise you rush into while you dream, and are glad
to make your escape with wet hair and every limb shaking. The bullet is
not run, the blade not forged, the man not born; even the winged words
of truth drop at your feet like lumps of lead. You require for such a
desperate encounter an enchanted and poisoned shaft dipped in a lie too
subtle to be found on earth. An enterprise for a dream, my masters!

'I began my exorcism with a heavy heart, with a sort of