Mary stared at her, seeming in the first full sweep of confidence, to be almost alarmed.
"You don't mean——?" She stopped, then cried, "Why, you silly, you believe in ghosts!"
"No, I don't," said Barbara, not far from tears.
"Yes, you do."
"No, I don't."
"Of course you do, you silly."
"No, I don't. He—he's real."
"Well," Mary said, with a final toss of the head, "if you go seeing ghosts like that you can't have me for your friend, Barbara Flint—you can choose, that's all."
Barbara was aghast. Such a catastrophe had never been contemplated. Lose Mary? Sooner life itself. She resolved, sorrowfully, to say no more about her Friend. But here occurred a strange thing. It was as though Mary felt that over this one matter Barbara had eluded her; she returned to it again and again, always with contemptuous but inquisitive allusion.
"Did he come last night, Barbara?"