"How?" he continued. "For what is it? Where is it?"
"You feel it's here—now?"
"Undoubtedly. But I couldn't tell you in what part of the room."
He stared about, glancing rapidly at everything.
"Then you consider yourself haunted?" said Father Murchison.
He, too, was much moved and disturbed, although he was not conscious of the presence of anything near them in the room.
"I have never believed in any nonsense of that kind, as you know," Guildea answered. "I simply state a fact which I cannot understand, and which is beginning to be very painful to me. There is something here. But whereas most so-called hauntings have been described to me as inimical, what I am conscious of is that I am admired, loved, desired. This is distinctly horrible to me, Murchison, distinctly horrible."
Father Murchison suddenly remembered the first evening he had spent with Guildea, and the latter's expression almost of disgust, at the idea of receiving warm affection from anyone. In the light of that long ago conversation the present event seemed supremely strange, and almost like a punishment for an offence committed by the Professor against humanity. But, looking up at his friend's twitching face, the Father resolved not to be caught in the net of his hideous belief.
"There can be nothing here," he said. "It's impossible."
"What does that bird imitate, then?"