“How d’you mean, there?”
“Here—in this room. I tell you I can’t get over that feeling that she’s here.”
“Oh, feel, feel,” he said; “but don’t talk to me about it!”
And he left the room, flinging himself out in anger. And instantly her flame went out.
I thought, “How he must have hurt her!” It was the old thing over again: I trying to break him down, to make him show her; he beating us both off, punishing us both. You see, I knew now what she had come back for: she had come back to find out whether he loved her. With a longing unquenched by death, she had come back for certainty. And now, as always, my clumsy interference had only made him more hard, more obstinate. I thought, “If only he could see her! But as long as he beats her off he never will.”
Still, if I could once get him to believe that she was there—
I made up my mind that the next time I saw the phantasm I would tell him.
The next evening and the next its chair was empty, and I judged that it was keeping away, hurt by what it had heard the last time.
But the third evening we were hardly seated before I saw it.
It was sitting up, alert and observant, not staring at Donald as it used, but looking round the room, as if searching for something that it missed.