Yet instantly I looked up. He--it was a _he_ this time--was standing in the doorway, which leads from this big living-room into the front hall. We were vis-à-vis--tête-à-tête one might say. He was looking straight at me and I--I assure you, Spink--I looked straight at him. Spink, you have never heard of a jovial ghost, have you? I'm sure I haven't. But this was or could have been a jovial ghost. He was big--not fat but ample--middle-aged, more than middle-aged. He wore an enormous beard cut square like the men in Assyrian mural tablets. Hair a little long. I assure you he was the handsomest old beggar that I have ever seen. He looked like a portrait by Titian. I got--it's like holding a photographic negative up to the light and trying to get the figures on it--that he wore a sort of flowing gown; it made him stately. And one of those little round caps that conceal or protect baldness. I can't describe him. How the devil _can_ you describe a ghost? I mean an apparition. For he isn't dead either--any more than the little girls is. He's alive somewhere. Well, our steady exchange of looks went on and on and on. If I could have said anything it would have been: "What do you want of me, you handsome old beggar?" What he would have said to me I don't know; although he was trying with all his ghostly strength to put some message over. How he was trying! It was that effort that kept him from being what he was--_is_--jovial. God, how that gaze burned--tore--ate. It grew insupportable after a while--it was melting me to nothingness. I dropped my eyes. Suddenly I could lift them, for I knew he was gone. Somehow I had the feeling that a monstrous bomb had noiselessly exploded in the room. His going troubled me no more than his coming. I remember I said aloud: "I'm sorry I couldn't get you, old top! Better luck next time!" I got up from my chair after a few minutes to take my usual before-going-to-bed walk. I walked about the room; absent-mindedly putting things to rights--the way women do. My mind--and I suspect my eyes too--were still so full of him that when, on stepping outside, I came across another--I was conscious of some shock. Again not of fear, but of a terrific surprise. Are you getting all this, Spink? Oh, of course you're not, because you don't believe it. But try to believe it. Put yourself in my place! Try to get the wonder, the magic, the terror, the touch now and then of horror, but above all the fierce thrill--of living with a family of ghosts?