In this case, being still new to the life into which I was gradually being drawn, it did not for one moment occur to me to start an adventure of my own. I might have accosted the woman, who was, as the saying goes, anybody's familiar; or I might have spied for another excursion of her spirit, and, with all preparation made, have followed her. But I did neither of these things at the time. I saw her next day leaning bare-elbowed on the ledge of her half-door, her hair in curl-papers, her face the pale unwholesome pinched oval of most London women of her class. Her bodice was pinned across her chest; she was coarse-aproned, new from the wash-tub or the grate. Not a sign upon her but told of her frowsy round. The stale air of foul lodgment was upon her. I found out indeed this much about her ostensible state, that she was the wife of a cab-driver whose name was Ventris. He was an ill-conditioned, sottish fellow who treated her badly, but had given her a child. But he was chiefly on night-work at Euston, and the man whom I had seen familiar with her in the daytime was not he. Her reputation among her neighbours was not good. She was, in fact, no better than she should be--or, as I prefer to put it, no better than she could be. Yet I knew her, withal, as of the fairy-kind, bound to this earth-bondage by some law of the Universe not yet explored; not pitiable because not self-pitying, and (what is more important) not reprehensible because impossible to be bound, as we are, soul to body. I know that now, but did not know it then; and yet--extraordinary thing--I was never shocked by the contrast between her two states of being. This is to me a clear and certain evidence of their reality--just as it is evidence to me that when, at ten years old, I seemed to see the boy in the wood, I really did see him. An hallucination or a dream upsets your moral balance. The things impressed upon you are abnormal; and the abnormal disturbs you. Now these apparitions did not seem abnormal. I saw nothing wonderful in Mrs. Ventris's act. I was impressed by it, I was excited by it, as I still am by a convulsion of nature--a thunder-storm in the Alps, for instance, a water-spout at sea. Such things hold beauty and terror; they entrance, they appal; but they never shock. They happen, and they are right. I have not seen what people call a ghost, and I have often been afraid lest I should see one. But I know very well that if ever I did I should have no fear. I know very well that a natural fact impresses its conformity with law upon you first and last. It becomes, on the moment of its appearance, a part of the landscape. If it does not, it is an hallucination, or a freak of the imagination, and will shock you. I have much more extraordinary experiences than this to relate, but there will be nothing shocking in these pages--at least nothing which gave me the least sensation of shock. One of them--a thing extraordinary to all--must occupy a chapter by itself. I cannot