efore I could utter a sound or stretch out a hand
to stop her, I saw her walk straight through the gray figure and
carefully place the log on the andirons.

So she isn't real, after all, she is merely a phantom, I found myself
thinking, as I fled from the room, and hurried along the hall to the
staircase. She is only a ghost, and nobody believes in ghosts any
longer. She is something that I know doesn't exist, yet even, though she
can't possibly be, I can swear that I have seen her. My nerves were so
shaken by the discovery that as soon as I reached my room I sank in a
heap on the rug, and it was here that Hopkins found me a little later
when she came to bring me an extra blanket.

"You looked so upset I thought you might have seen something," she said.
"Did anything happen while you were in the room?"

"She was there all the time--every blessed minute. You walked right
through her when you put the log on the fire. Is it possible that you
didn't see her?"

"No, I didn't see anything out of the way." She was plainly frightened.
"Where was she standing?"

"On the hearthrug in front of Mr. Vanderbridge. To reach the fire you
had to walk straight through her, for she didn't move. She didn't give
way an inch."

"Oh, she never gives way. She never gives way living or dead."

This was more than human nature could stand. "In Heaven's name," I cried
irritably, "who is she?"

"Don't you know?" She appeared genuinely surprised. "Why, she is the
other Mrs. Vanderbridge. She died fifteen years ago, just a year after
they were married, and people say a scandal was hushed up about her,
which he never knew. She isn't a good sort, that's what I think of her,
though they say he almost worshipped her."

"And she still has this hold on him?"

"He can't shake it off, that's what's the matter with him, and if it
goes on, he will end his days in an asylum. You see, she was very young,
scarcely more than a girl, and he got the idea in his head that it was
marrying him that killed her. If you want to know what I think, I
believe she puts it there for a purpose."

"You mean--?" I was so completely at sea that I couldn't frame a
rational question.

"I mean she haunts him purposely in order to drive him out of his mind.
She was always that sort, jealous and exacting, the kind that clutches
and strangles a man, and I've often thought, though I've no head for
speculation, that we carry into the next world the traits and feelings
that