For my own part, I have had a very wide, practical, and intimate
acquaintance with dead people--sometimes in very queer places--but I
have never seen anything even faintly suggestive of a ghost. Therefore,
my dear lady, I advise you to take it for granted that you have seen a
living person."
"I never shivered with cold and felt my hair rise upon my head at the
sight of any living thing," said Unorna dreamily, and still shading her
eyes with her hand.
"But might you not feel that if you chanced to see some one whom you
particularly disliked?" asked Keyork, with a gentle laugh.
"Disliked?" repeated Unorna in a harsh voice. She changed her position
and looked at him. "Yes, perhaps that is possible. I had not thought of
that. And yet--I would rather it had been a ghost."
"More interesting, certainly, and more novel," observed Keyork, slowly
polishing his smooth cranium with the palm of his hand. His head, and
the perfect hemisphere of his nose, reflected the light like ivory balls
of different sizes.
"I was standing before him," said Unorna. "The place was lonely and
it was already night. The stars shone on the snow, and I could see
distinctly. Then she--that woman--passed softly between us. He cried
out, calling her by name, and then fell forward. After that, the woman
was gone. What was it that I saw?"
"You are quite sure that it was not really a woman?"
"Would a woman, and of all women that one, have come and gone without a
word?"
"Not unless she is a very singularly reticent person," answered Keyork,
with a laugh.
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