She listened to his alleviations, finding them, apparently, irrelevant. “But why the third window? Why only that one? Why not the others? He is more on the moors than in the flagged garden.”
“A flagged garden with a fountain and a cedar tree is obviously a more suitable place for a ghost than the moors would be.”
“You do believe in ghosts and apparitions, then?”
“I don’t know whether I believe in them or not. There may be appearances we can’t account for. There’s a good deal of evidence for them. But I don’t believe they embody any consciousness. It’s far more likely, from what I’ve read, that they are a kind of photograph of some past emotion.”
“But, Bevis, wouldn’t it frighten you dreadfully to see one, whatever it was?”
“Perhaps. Yes. It might be very nasty,” he agreed.
“Yet if I could be sure that it embodied consciousness it might frighten me, but it would mean such rapture, too. I should know then that Malcolm had survived death and still thought of me.”
“Yes. I see,” Captain Saltonhall murmured, rather awkwardly. “Yes. Of course. That would be a great comfort to you.”
“Comfort hardly expresses it, Bevis.”
Silence fell between them for a little while, and when the young man next spoke it was still with the slight awkwardness. “But then, if that’s what you need, you ought to like the third window and the chance you feel it gives you.”