“‘Let me introduce you to Sir Henry Payle,’ she said.
“I turned and saw my vis-à-vis of the night before. It was quite unmistakably he, and as we shook hands he looked at me I thought with vague and puzzled recognition.
“‘Haven’t we met before, Mr. Carling?’ he said. ‘I seem to recollect——’
“For the moment I forgot the strange manner of his disappearance from the carriage, and thought that it had been the man himself whom I had seen last night.
“‘Surely, and not so long ago,’ I said. ‘For we sat opposite each other in the last tube-train from Piccadilly Circus yesterday night.’
“He still looked at me, frowning, puzzled, and shook his head.
“‘That can hardly be,’ he said. ‘I only came up from the country this morning.’
“Now this interested me profoundly, for the astral body, we are told, abides in some half-conscious region of the mind or spirit, and has recollections of what has happened to it, which it can convey only very vaguely and dimly to the conscious mind. All lunch-time I could see his eyes again and again directed to me with the same puzzled and perplexed air, and as I was taking my departure he came up to me.
“‘I shall recollect some day,’ he said, ‘where we met before, and I hope we may meet again. Was it not——?’—and he stopped. ‘No: it has gone from me,’ he added.”
The log that Anthony had thrown on the fire was burning bravely now, and its high-flickering flame lit up his face.