iss
Letchford was "not so ignorant as she thought," and when the latter
begged her not to destroy The Scented Garden she promised that it should
be saved; and no doubt, she really intended to save it. Miss Letchford
having gone out for the evening, Lady Burton returned again to her task.
Her mind was still uneasy about The Scented Garden, and she took out
the manuscript to examine it. Of the character of the work she had some
idea, though her husband had not allowed her to read it. Fifteen hundred
persons had promised subscriptions; and she had also received an offer
of six thousand guineas for it from a publisher. [650] She took out the
manuscript and laid it on the floor, "two large volumes worth." [651]
When she opened it she was perfectly bewildered and horrified. The text
alone would have staggered her, but, as we have seen, Burton had trebled
the size of the book with notes of a certain character. Calming herself,
she reflected that the book was written only for scholars and mainly for
Oriental students, and that her husband "never wrote a thing from the
impure point of view. He dissected a passion from every point of view,
as a doctor may dissect a body, showing its source, its origin, its
evil, and its good." [652]

Then she looked up, and there, before her, stood her husband just as he
had stood in the flesh. He pointed to the manuscript and said "Burn it!"
Then he disappeared.

As she had for years been a believer in spirits, the apparition did
not surprise her, and yet she was tremendously excited. "Burn it!" she
echoed, "the valuable manuscript? At which he laboured for so many weary
hours? Yet, doubtless, it would be wrong to preserve it. Sin is the only
rolling stone that gathers moss; what a gentleman, a scholar, a man of
the world may write, when living, he would see very differently as a
poor soul standing naked before its God, with its good or evil deeds
alone to answer for, and their consequences visible to it from the first
moment, rolling on to the end of time. Oh, he would cry, for a friend
on earth to stop and check them! What would he care for the applause of
fifteen hundred men now--for the whole world's praise, and God offended?
And yet the book is for students only. Six thousand guineas, too, is a
large sum, and I have great need of it."

At this moment the apparition again stood before her, and in a
sterner and more authoritative voice said: "Burn it!" and then again
disappeared. In her ex