or a long walk alone, and the
twilight was thickening into darkness as I neared home. Suddenly
looking up from my reverie, I saw, standing on a knoll the other side
of the ravine, the figure of a woman. She held a cloak about her
head, and I could not see her face. I took off my cap, and called out
a good-night to her, but she never moved or spoke. Then--God knows
why, for my brain was full of other thoughts at the time--a clammy
chill crept over me, and my tongue grew dry and parched. I stood
rooted to the spot, staring at her across the yawning gorge that
divided us; and slowly she moved away, and passed into the gloom, and
I continued my way. I have said nothing to Muriel, and shall not. The
effect the story has had upon myself warns me not to do so."

_From a letter dated eleven days later_:

"She has come. I have known she would, since that evening I saw her
on the mountain; and last night she came, and we have sat and looked
into each other's eyes. You will say, of course, that I am mad--that
I have not recovered from my fever--that I have been working too
hard--that I have heard a foolish tale, and that it has filled my
overstrung brain with foolish fancies: I have told myself all that.
But the thing came, nevertheless--a creature of flesh and blood? a
creature of air? a creature of my own imagination?--what matter? it
was real to me.

"It came last night, as I sat working, alone. Each night I have
waited for it, listened for it--longed for it, I know now. I heard
the passing of its feet upon the bridge, the tapping of its hand upon
the door, three times--tap, tap, tap. I felt my loins grow cold, and
a pricking pain about my head; and I gripped my chair with both hands,
and waited, and again there came the tapping--tap, tap, tap. I rose
and slipped the bolt of the door leading to the other room, and again
I waited, and again there came the tapping--tap, tap, tap. Then I
opened the heavy outer door, and the wind rushed past me, scattering
my papers, and the woman entered in, and I closed the door behind her.
She threw her hood back from her head, and unwound a kerchief from
about her neck, and laid it on the table. Then she crossed and sat
before the fire, and I noticed her bare feet were damp with the night
dew.

"I stood over against her and gazed at her, and she smiled at me--a
strange,