He rose and lit the candle, crossed over to the window where

the mist shone grey, knowing that no barriers of walls or door or

ceiling could keep out this host of Presences that poured so thickly

everywhere about him. It was like a wall of being, with peering eyes,

small hands stretched out, a thousand pattering wee feet, and tiny

voices crying in a chorus very faintly and beseeching…. The haunted

room! Was it not, rather, a temple vestibule, prepared and sanctified

by yearning rites few men might ever guess, for all the childless women

of the world? How could she know that he would understand—this woman

he had seen but twice in all his life? And how entrust to him so great

a mystery that was her secret? Had she so easily divined in him a

similar yearning to which, long years ago, death had denied fulfilment?

Was she clairvoyant in the true sense, and did all faces bear on them

so legibly this great map that sorrow traced?…

And then, with awful suddenness, mere feelings dipped away, and

something concrete happened. The handle of the door had faintly

rattled. He turned. The round brass knob was slowly moving. And first,

at the sight, something of common fear did grip him, as though his

heart had missed a beat, but on the instant he heard the voice of his

own mother, now long beyond the stars, calling to him to go softly yet

with speed. He watched a moment the feeble efforts to undo the door,

yet never afterwards could swear that he saw actual movement, for

something in him, tragic as blindness, rose through a mist of tears

and darkened vision utterly….

He went towards the door. He took the handle very gently, and very

softly then he opened it.

Beyond was darkness. He saw the empty passage, the edge of the

banisters where the great hall yawned below, and, dimly, the outline

of the Alpine photograph and the stuffed deer’s head upon the wall.

And then he dropped upon his knees and opened wide his arms to

something that came in upon uncertain, viewless feet. All the young

winds and flowers and dews of dawn passed with it … filling him to

the brim … covering closely his breast and eyes and lips. There clung

to him all the small beginnings of life that cannot stand alone …

the little helpless hands and arms that have no confidence … and

when the wealth of tears and love that flooded his heart seemed to

break upon the frontiers of some mysterious yet impossible fulfilment,

he rose and went with curious small steps towards the window to taste

the cooling, misty air of that other dark Emptiness that waited so

patiently there above the entire world. He drew the sash up. The air

felt soft and tender as though there were somewhere children in it

too—children of stars and flowers, of mists and wings and music, all

that the Universe contains unborn and tiny…. And when at length he

turned again the door was closed. The room was empty of any life but

that which lay so wonderfully blessed within himself. And this, he

felt, had marvelously increased and multiplied….

Sleep then came back to him, and in the morning he left the house

before the others were astir, pleading some overlooked engagement. For

he had seen Ghosts indeed, but yet no ghost that he could talk about

with others round an open fire.

.