You heard the wind.’ For mist had risen from the river just below

the lawn, pressing close against the windows of the old house like a

soft grey hand, and through it the stir of leaves was faintly

audible…. Then, while several called for lights, others remembered

that hop-pickers were still about in the lanes, and the tramps this

autumn overbold and insolent. All, perhaps, wished secretly for the

sun. Only the elderly man in the corner sat quiet and unmoved,

contributing nothing. He had told no fearsome story. He had evaded,

indeed, many openings expressly made for him, though fully aware that

to his well-known interest in psychical things was partly due his

presence in the week-end party. ‘I never have experiences— that way,’

he said shortly when some one asked him point blank for a tale; ‘I have

no unusual powers.’ There was perhaps the merest hint of contempt in

his tone, but the hostess from her darkened corner quickly and

tactfully covered his retreat. And he wondered. For he knew why she

invited him. The haunted room, he was well aware, had been specially

allotted to him.

And then, most opportunely, the door opened noisily and the host

came in. He sniffed at the darkness, rang at once for lamps, puffed at

his big curved pipe, and generally, by his mere presence, made the

group feel rather foolish. Light streamed past him from the corridor.

His white hair shone like silver. And with him came the atmosphere of

common sense, of shooting, agriculture, motors, and the rest. Age

entered at that door. And his young wife sprang up instantly to greet

him, as though his disapproval of this kind of entertainment might need

humouring.

It may have been the light—that witchery of half-lights from the

fire and the corridor, or it may have been the abrupt entrance of the

Practical upon the soft Imaginative that traced the outline with such

pitiless, sharp conviction. At any rate, the contrast—for those who

had this inner clairvoyant sight all had been prating of so

glibly!—was unmistakably revealed. It was poignantly dramatic, pain

somewhere in it—naked pain. For, as she paused a moment there beside

him in the light, this childless wife of three years’ standing, picture

of youth and beauty, there stood upon the threshold of that room the

presence of a true ghost story.

And most marevellously she changed—her lineaments, her very

figure, her whole presentment. Etched against the gloom, the delicate,

unmarked face shone suddenly keen and anguished, and a rich maturity,

deeper than any mere age, flushed all her little person with its

secret grandeur. Lines started into being upon the pale skin of the

girlish face, lines of pleading, pity, and love the daylight did not

show, and with them an air of magic tenderness that betrayed, though

for a second only, the full soft glory of a motherhood denied, yet

somehow mysteriously enjoyed. About her slenderness rose all the

deep-bosomed sweetness of maternity, a potential.mother of the world,

and a mother, though she might know no dear fulfilment, who yet yearned

to sweep into her immense embrace all the little helpless things that

ever lived.

Light, like emotion, can play strangest tricks. The change pressed

almost upon the edge of revelation…. Yet, when a moment later lamps

were brought, it is doubtful if any but the silent guest who had told

no marvellous tale, knew no psychical experience, and disclaimed the

smallest clairvoyant faculty, had received and registered the vivid,

poignant picture. For an instant it had flashed there, mercilessly

clear for all to see who were not blind to subtle spiritual wonder

thick with pain. And it was not so much mere picture of youth and age

ill-matched, as of youth that yearned with the oldest craving in the

world, and of age that had slipped beyond the power of sympathetically

divining it….