Perhaps she was—but I was sure _I_ wasn’t, in her company. And her way of sidling nearer to the door made me distinctly want to reach it before she did. In a rush of cowardice I strode ahead of her—but a second later she had the latch in her hand and was leaning against the panels, her long white raiment hanging about her like grave-clothes. She drooped her head a little sideways and peered at me under her lashless lids. “You’re not going?” she reproached me. I dived down in vain for my missing voice, and silently signed that I was. “Going—going away? Altogether?” Her eyes were still fixed on me, and I saw two tears gather in their corners and run down over the red glistening circles on her cheeks. “Oh, but you mustn’t,” she said gently. “I’m too lonely....” I stammered something inarticulate, my eyes on the blue-nailed hand that grasped the latch. Suddenly the window behind us crashed open, and a gust of wind, surging in out of the blackness, extinguished the candle on the nearest chimney-corner. I glanced back nervously to see if the other candle were going out too. “You don’t like the noise of the wind? _I_ do. It’s all I have to talk to.... People don’t like me much since I’ve been dead. Queer, isn’t it? The peasants are so superstitious. At times I’m really lonely....” Her voice cracked in a last effort at laughter, and she swayed toward me, one hand still on the latch. “Lonely, lonely! If you _knew_ how lonely! It was a lie when I told you I wasn’t! And now you come, and your face looks friendly ... and you say you’re going to leave me! No—no—no—you shan’t! Or else, why did you come? It’s cruel.... I used to think I knew what loneliness was ... after Grace married, you know. Grace thought she was always thinking of me, but she wasn’t. She called me ‘darling,’ but she was thinking of her husband and children. I said to myself then: ‘You couldn’t be lonelier if you were dead.’ But I know better now.... There’s been no loneliness like this last year’s ... none! And sometimes I sit here and think: ‘If a man came along some day and took a fancy to you?’” She gave another wavering cackle. “Well, such things _have_ happened, you know, even after youth’s gone ... a man who’d had his troubles too. But no one came till tonight ... and now you say you’re going!” Suddenly she flung herself toward me. “Oh, stay with me, stay with me ... just tonight.... It’s so sweet and quiet here.... No one need know ... no one will ever come and trouble us.”