here--nothing--can reach you. You must not spend another single night
here. Ethan will go with you. I will, too, if you want us. You must not
be left alone until you are quite safe; perhaps in New York?"

"And, Desire Michell?"

"She is in no danger, I suppose. She is not my cousin, anyhow. And even
she told you to go away."

"You believe my story, then? You do not think me suffering from
delusions?"

"Ethan saw the girl, too. If he had not come here in time to save you, I
believe you would have died in that terrible stupor. Besides, I have
seen for weeks that something was changing you."

"What does Vere say?" I questioned, studying the absorbed gravity of his
expression. I wondered what I myself would have said if anyone had
brought me such a story.

He passed his arm around Phillida and drew her to him with a quieting,
protective movement. His regard met mine with more significance than he
chose to voice.

"I'm satisfied to take the thing as you tell it, Mr. Locke," he
answered. "Phil is right, it seems to me, about you not staying here. I
don't think the young lady ought to stay, either."

"She refuses to leave, Vere. What can I offer her that I have not
offered? How can I find her? You have heard how I searched the
countryside for a hint of such a girl's presence. No one has ever seen
her; or else someone lies very cleverly."

In the pause, Phillida hesitatingly ventured an idea:

"Perhaps she is not--real. If the monster is a ghost thing, may not she
be one, too? If we are to believe in such things at all----? She almost
seems to intend that you shall believe her the ghost of the witch girl
in that old book."

I shook my head with the helpless feeling of trying to explain some
abstruse knowledge to a child. I had spoken of the colossal spaces, the
solemn immensities of the place where I had set my human foot. I had
tried to paint the desolate bleakness of that Borderland where the
unnamed Thing and I met, each beyond his own law-decreed boundary, and
locked in combat bitter and strong. Phillida had listened; and talked of
ghosts the bugbears of grave-yard superstition. Did Vere comprehend me
better? Did he visualize the struggle, weirdly akin to legends of knight
and dragon, as prize of which waited Desire Michell; forlornly helpless
as white Andromeda chained to her black cliff? Could the Maine
countryman, the cabaret entertainer, seize the truths glimpsed by
Rosicrucians and mystics of lost cults,