“We are, then, in precisely the same position with regard to the belief in ghosts which we occupy towards such questions as the abolition of death. The argument in both cases is inductive and all but conclusive. We do not know of any case, in the two hundred generations of men, more or less, with whose history we are in some degree acquainted, of any individual who has escaped death. We conclude that all men must die. Similarly, we do not know certainly—not from real, irrefutable evidence at least—that the soul of any man or woman dead has ever returned visibly to earth. We conclude, therefore, that none ever will. There is a difference in the two cases, which throws a slight balance of probability on the side of the ghost. Many persons have asserted that they have seen ghosts, though none have ever asserted that men do not die. For my own part, I have had a very wide, practical, and intimate acquaintance with dead people—sometimes in very queer places—but I have never seen anything even faintly suggestive of a ghost. Therefore, my dear lady, I advise you to take it for granted that you have seen a living person.”
“I never shivered with cold and felt my hair rise upon my head at the sight of any living thing,” said Unorna dreamily, and still shading her eyes with her hand.
“But might you not feel that if you chanced to see some one whom you particularly disliked?” asked Keyork, with a gentle laugh.
“Disliked?” repeated Unorna in a harsh voice. She changed her position and looked at him. “Yes, perhaps that is possible. I had not thought of that. And yet—I would rather it had been a ghost.”
“More interesting, certainly, and more novel,” observed Keyork, slowly polishing his smooth cranium with the palm of his hand. His head, and the perfect hemisphere of his nose, reflected the light like ivory balls of different sizes.
“I was standing before him,” said Unorna. “The place was lonely and it was already night. The stars shone on the snow, and I could see distinctly. Then she—that woman—passed softly between us. He cried out, calling her by name, and then fell forward. After that, the woman was gone. What was it that I saw?”
“You are quite sure that it was not really a woman?”
“Would a woman, and of all women that one, have come and gone without a word?”
“Not unless she is a very singularly reticent person,” answered Keyork, with a laugh. “But you need not go so far as the ghost theory for an explanation. You were hypnotised, my dear friend, and he made you see her. That is as simple as anything need be.”
“But that is impossible, because——” Unorna stopped and changed colour.