“Excuse me!” said Minver. “There’s Whitley. I must speak to him.”
He went away, leaving me alone with the psychologist.
“And what is your own conclusion in this instance?” I asked.
“Why, I haven’t formulated it yet.”
[THOUGH ONE ROSE FROM THE DEAD.]
I.
You are very welcome to the Alderling incident, my dear Acton, if you think you can do anything with it, and I will give it as circumstantially as possible. The thing has its limitations, I should think, for the fictionist, chiefly in a sort of roundedness which leaves little play to the imagination. It seems to me that it would be more to your purpose if it were less _pat_, in its catastrophe, but you are a better judge of all that than I am, and I will put the facts in your hands, and keep my own hands off, so far as any plastic use of the material is concerned.
The first I knew of the peculiar Alderling situation was shortly after William James’s “Will to Believe” came out. I had been telling the Alderlings about it, for they had not seen it, and I noticed that from time to time they looked significantly at each other. When I had got through he gave a little laugh, and she said, “Oh, you may laugh!” and then I made bold to ask, “What is it?”
“Marion can tell you,” he said. He motioned towards the coffee-pot and asked, “More?” I shook my head, and he said, “Come out and let us see what the maritime interests have been doing for us. Pipe or cigar?” I chose cigarettes, and he brought the box off the table, stopping on his way to the veranda, and taking his pipe and tobacco-pouch from the hall mantel.