Had I seen any? he inquired; and I answered "Hundreds." After a minute, repenting of my incivility, I put your letter down, and told him that that was why he saw me getting my breakfast before him. And I even explained--for why need a self-respecting woman be disagreeable even to an unknown colonial in an ill-made flannel suit, and with rough hair?--that I had been working too hard lately, and that the shades of people, dead or in distant lands, well-known and half-forgotten, had taken to appearing before me, when I lifted my eyes from my book. "In fact, I have come here to get rid of ghosts," I told him; and he said he hoped I had not come to the wrong place. "Why, you surely don't think 'The Continental' haunted?" I inquired. Then he told me, with an appearance of perfect gravity, that a ghost had visited him last night. "It is just possible that _my_ ghosts have lost their way in this bewildering place and have strolled in to you, by mistake," I suggested. "You don't happen to have seen any since you came here?" "I only came last night." "And you didn't see one?" "No! Do I look as if I had?" "Not the ghost of a terrified man, for instance, flying up in bed?" "Good gracious, no! Why?" "I thought you might have done," he said, and went on with his breakfast. You'll say he talked such nonsense to get me to look at him, Berthalina; and of course I did. He has not the appearance of a seer of ghosts: a huge, heavy man, with a hump on a big, characterful nose; a powerful jaw, and very quick, blue eyes beneath shaggy eyebrows. The talk of ghosts seemed out of place on such firm lips. "Was your ghost that of a terrified man, etc.?" I asked him, in spite of myself. He gave a vigorous shake of his head. "Thank heavens, no!" he said. "In that case I shouldn't have given it two thoughts." "Of what then?" "Of a beautiful woman." He spoke with much deliberation, and his eyes upon my face were serious. "What was she like? Describe her." He turned away to reach a bit of bread from a neighbouring table. "She was very much like you," he said. You may be sure I let him see then that he had gone too far. * * * * * I was standing by the door of my disgraceful little bedroom, dressed for walking, when I saw him again. He was mounting the broad stairs with his head bent, and not wishing to pass the man on my way down, I waited till he had disappeared within the door of his room. That door, with the width of the house between, was directly opposite mine. As it opened, there came to me the first glimmer of the light which was to burst on me in all its terrible force a minute later.