“I have no expectations, not even any anticipations,” she said. “We may find keepsakes of some kind; there cannot be love-letters, for they scarcely separated a day after they met, or an hour after they married. There may be nothing in the coffin. But I am convinced that whatever it does or does not contain, David’s love for Marian is bound up with the closure of that coffin. I believe that if it is opened he will be released from his passion of grief and be free to love me.” “You mean practically to resort to an incantation, a sort of witchcraft. The notion is altogether unworthy of you, especially while so natural a device as travel remains untried.” “You do not understand,” she said, “that I feel compelled to do something.” “Is not going for a cruise doing something?” he asked. “Practically doing nothing,” she replied. “Just being with David and watching for the change that never comes. You don’t know how that makes me feel forced to take some action.” “I do not know,” he said, “because you have not told me.” “I cannot tell you,” she said, “because I cannot find any words to express what I feel. I could not convey it to you, the loneliness that overwhelms me when I am alone with David. It is worse than being alone; I cannot imagine feeling so lonely lost in a wilderness, solitary in the desert, adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Being with David, as he is, makes me feel--” (her voice sank to a whisper and her face grew pale, her lips gray) “oh, it makes me feel as if I were worse than with nobody. It makes me feel as if I were with nothing, with nothing at all.” “I sympathize with you deeply,” said Vargas. “But all you say only deepens my conviction that your one road to safety lies in striving to overcome these feelings; your best hope is change of scene and travel. Above all let that grave alone.” “My determination is irrevocably taken,” she repeated. “Mrs. Llewellyn,” Vargas asked, “how, in your belief, did the writing you saw upon the slate come there?” “I have no conception at all as to how it came there,” she replied. “None at all?” he probed. “None definitely,” she said. “Vaguely I suppose I conceive it came there by the power of some consciousness and will beyond our ken.” “Do you mean,” he queried, “by the intervention of a ghost, or spirit or some such disembodied entity?” “Perhaps,” she admitted, “but I have not thought it out at all.” “Granted a spirit,” he suggested, “might it not be a malignant sprite, an imp bent on doing you harm, upon entrapping you to your destruction?” “I don’t credit such an idea for a moment,” she said. “The message has given me hope. Your innuendoes seek to rob me of my hope.” “I seek to save you,” Vargas said, “to dislodge you from your fortalice of resolve.” “For the third time,” she said, “I tell you that my determination is irrevocably taken.”