"If we lived in the Middle Ages," said Lamberti, "I should say that I was possessed by the devil, or haunted." He stopped and laughed oddly.
"Why not say so now?" asked the doctor. "The names of things do not matter in the least. Let us say that you are haunted, if that describes what troubles you. Very good. What haunts you?"
"A young girl," Lamberti answered, after a moment's pause.
"Do you mean that you see, or think you see, the apparition of a young girl who is dead?"
"She is alive, but I have only met her once. That is the strange thing about it, or, at least, the beginning of the strange thing. Of course it is perfectly absurd, but when I first saw her, the only time we met, I had the sensation of recognising some one I had not seen for many years. As she is only just eighteen, that is impossible."
"Excuse me, my dear sir, nothing is impossible. Every one is absent-minded sometimes. You may have seen the young lady in the street, or at the theatre. You may have stared at her quite unconsciously while you were thinking of something else, and her features may have so impressed themselves upon your memory, without your knowing it, that you actually recognised her when you met her in a drawing-room."
"I daresay," admitted Lamberti, indifferently. "But that is no reason why I should dream of her every night."
"I am not sure. It might be a reason. Such things happen."
"And every night when I wake from the dream, I hear some one close the door of my room softly, as if she were just going out. I always lock my door at night."
"Perhaps it sometimes shakes a little in the frame."