"I wish I could tell you," she answered. "I wish I could say that I knew. Half the night the three of us have talked and wondered. I have heard plenty of theories as to a second life on some imaginary planet, but I never heard of the dead who lived again here, in this world!"
He looked puzzled.
"Do you mean," he asked, "that he was like some one whom you believed to be dead?"
She was silent for a moment. The sun was hot even where they sat, but he fancied that he saw her shiver. She looked into his face, and something of the terror of the night before was in her eyes.
"To us," she said slowly, "to Madame de Melbain and to me, he was a ghost, an actual apparition. He spoke to us with the voice of one whom we know to be dead. He came to us, in his form."
Wrayson looked across at her with a quiet smile.
"There was nothing of the ghost about Duncan!" he remarked. "I should consider him a remarkably substantial person. Don't you think that we were all a little overwrought last night? A strong likeness and a little imagination will often work wonders."
"If it was a likeness only," she said, "why did he leave us so abruptly, why has he left this place at a moment's notice to avoid us?"
Wrayson was silent for a few seconds.
"Look here," he said, "this is a matter of common sense after all. If you were not deceived by a likeness, it was the man himself! That goes without saying. What reasons had you for supposing that he was dead?"