"You aren't afraid of me, darling, are you, though I am dead? I heard all you said to me when you came, but I couldn't answer. But now I've come back from the dead to tell you. I wasn't really so bad as you thought me. Elvire had told me she loved Oscar. I only wrote the letter to make it easier for you. I was too proud to tell you when you were so angry, but I am not proud any more now. You'll love me again now, won't you, now I'm dead? One always forgives dead people." The poor ghost's voice was hollow and faint. Abject terror paralyzed me. I could answer nothing. "Say you forgive me," the thin, monotonous voice went on; "say you love me again." I had to speak. Coward as I was, I did manage to stammer-- "Yes; I love you. I have always loved you, God help me!" The sound of my own voice reassured me, and I ended more firmly than I began. The figure by the bed swayed a little unsteadily. "I suppose," she said wearily, "you would be afraid, now I am dead, if I came round to you and kissed you?" She made a movement as though she would have come to me. Then I did shriek aloud, again and again, and covered my face with the sheet, and wound it round my head and body, and held it with all my force. There was a moment's silence. Then I heard my door close, and then a sound of feet and of voices, and I heard something heavy fall. I disentangled my head from the sheet. My room was empty. Then reason came back to me. I leaped from the bed. "Ida, my darling, come back! I am not afraid! I love you! Come back! Come back!" I sprang to my door and flung it open. Some one was bringing a light along the passage. On the floor, outside the door of the death-chamber, was a huddled heap--the corpse, in its grave-clothes. Dead, dead, dead. * * * * * She is buried in Mellor churchyard, and there is no stone over her. Now, whether it was catalepsy--as the doctors said--or whether my love came back even from the dead to me who loved her, I shall never know; but this I know--that, if I had held out my arms to her as she stood at my bed-foot--if I had said, "Yes, even from the grave, my darling--from hell itself, come back, come back to me!"--if I had had room in my coward's heart for anything but the unreasoning terror that killed love in that hour, I should not now be here alone. I shrank from her--I feared her--I would not take her to my heart. And now she will not come to me any more. Why do I go on living? You see, there is the child. It is four years old now, and it has never spoken and never smiled. _MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE._