She awakened her husband, who sat up in bed and stared back at the figure. He saw it as clearly and distinctly as his wife saw it, and for some considerable time they watched it, until it gradually faded out. What is so sad is that they did not address this ghost. They had every opportunity, for at the same hour the same figure appeared the next night. It never tried to approach them: it simply stood there quietly for about an hour, and then vanished. Probably it was the wraith of a suicide. The fact remains that very few people do address the ghosts they see. Even if they are not afraid, it never seems to occur to seers that to speak to the disembodied might be a very kind and helpful thing to do. On their return home my brother-in-law told this story to some friends at his Club, and a stranger who was present said that he was aware there was a haunted room in that Torquay hotel, for he knew some one else who had seen it. CHAPTER XVI AN AUSTRIAN ADVENTURE Only once did I ever see an elemental of the terrifying type, and I have no desire to repeat the experience. Several years ago I was traveling alone on my way to Bohemia. With me, in the railway carriage, I had an aluminum traveler's typewriter, enclosed in, and fastened down to a leather case. I had also a large leather dispatch box, containing several chapters of a new novel I was writing, and which I meant to finish whilst abroad. At the last moment, just as I was starting on my journey, a friend had given me a small Russian ikon, and I had put that in the box with my writing materials. On reaching the frontier into Austria, I got out with the other travelers, carrying the typewriter in my hand to ensure its safety. A porter brought along the dispatch box, and the luggage from the van to the Custom House. I had nothing to declare and said so, but when the officials came to look at the typewriter and the contents of the dispatch box, their civil attitude changed, and I was curtly told that I would have to remain behind, in order that a more thorough examination might be made. There was little use in expostulating, no one took the smallest notice of any explanations I made, and I had the unhappy fate to behold all my fellow travelers stream out onto the platform, and make for the waiting train, and the growing conviction that they would proceed on their journey without me. When alone with the officials I had the field to myself, and I explained that I was a British subject, and a British novelist, but they merely looked at me with the same blend of incredulity my fellow countrymen so often favor me with, when they accidentally discover that I am synonymous with the writer, Violet Tweedale. How well I know the look and the words accompanying it: "Are you Violet Tweedale, the novelist? Well! who'd have thought it? I never would have guessed." Their expression says plainly enough, "You don't look capable of writing out a laundry bill, far less a novel."