I looked at him only a moment, for I don't believe in encouraging visions. In two strides I was across the room and shook the curtain loose.
"There goes some of your ghost," I said. I put the lamp back on the table. Its white reflection vanished from the blurred and darkened pane. "And there goes the rest!"
Paul didn't seem to listen. He was twisting his beard.
"See his face, Prentice? Now, I wonder what I said that irritated him?"
XI
"INEXTRICIBLE ERROR"
It was quarter to seven when Ingram arrived at the house in Portland Place. Althea, already dressed for dinner, sat writing at her desk in the big white room. It was the same desk, battered and inkstained, at which years ago—a staid little maid with a big pigtail, terminating in a sort of heavy tassel of auburn hair—she had prepared her home lessons. At one corner the leather lining had begun to curl up.
She scarcely looked round when he was announced, but thrust a bare white arm over the back of her chair.
"You find me achieving a last chapter," said she. "Sit down somewhere and, in the name of our common art, respect a fellow-laborer's agony."
"I suppose I'm unpardonably early."