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…. It passed, and all was as before.

The husband laughed with genial good-nature, not one whit annoyed.

‘They’ve been frightening you with stories, child,’ he said in his

jolly way, and put a protective arm about her.

‘Haven’t they now? Tell me the truth. Much better,’ he added, ‘have

joined me instead at billiards, or for a game of Patience, eh?’ She

looked up shyly into his face, and he kissed her on the forehead.

‘Perhaps they have—a little, dear,’ she said, ‘but now that you’ve

come, I feel all right again.’ ‘Another night of this,’ he added in a

graver tone, ‘and you’d be at your old trick of putting guests to

sleep in the haunted room. I was right after all, you see, to make it

out of bounds.’ He glanced fondly, paternally down upon her. Then he

went over and poked the fire into a blaze. Some one struck up a waltz

on the piano, and couples danced. All trace of nervousness vanished,

and the butler presently brought in the tray with drinks and biscuits.

And slowly the group dispersed. Candles were lit. They passed down the

passage into the big hail, talking in lowered voices of to-morrow’s

plans. The laughter died away as they went up the stairs to bed, the

silent guest and the young wife lingering a moment over the embers.

‘You have not, after all then, put me in your haunted room?’ he

asked quietly. ‘You mentioned, you remember, in your letter—’

‘I admit,’ she replied at once, her manner gracious beyond her

years, her voice quite different, ‘that I wanted you to sleep

there—some one, I mean, who really knows, and is not merely curious.

But—forgive my saying so—when I saw you’—she laughed very

slowly—’and when you told no marvellous story like the others, I

somehow felt—’

‘But I never see anything—’ he put in hurriedly.

‘You feel, though,’ she interrupted swiftly, the passionate

tenderness in her voice but half suppressed. ‘I can tell it from

your—’

‘Others, then,’ he interrupted abruptly, almost bluntly, ‘have

slept there—sat up, rather?’

‘Not recently. My husband stopped it.’ She paused a second, then

added, ‘I had that room — for a year—when first we married.’

The other’s anguished look flew back upon her little face like a

shadow and was gone, while at the sight of it there rose in himself a

sudden deep rush of wonderful amazement beckoning almost towards

worship. He did not speak, for his voice would tremble.

‘I had to give it up,’ she finished, very low.

‘Was it so terrible?’ after a pause he ventured.

She bowed her head.