She drew herself up a little with an air of question. “I believe everybody really thinks, too, and it’s your duty to let them find out what they’re thinking, by truly saying what you think.” “Then _she_ isn’t dealing quite honestly with him,” said Hewson, with a malicious smile. The man at Miss Hernshaw’s left was still talking about the play, and he was at that moment getting off a piece of pure parrotry about it to the lady across the table: just what everybody had been saying about it from the first. “No, I should think she was not,” said the girl, gravely. She looked hurt, as if she had been unfairly forced to the logic of her postulate, and Hewson was not altogether pleased with himself; but at least he had had his revenge in making her realize the man’s vacuity. He tried to get her back to talk about “Ghosts,” again, but she answered with indifference, and just then he was arrested by something a man was saying near the head of the table. VII. It was rather a large dinner, but not so large that a striking phrase, launched in a momentary lull, could not fuse all the wandering attentions in a sole regard. The man who spoke was the psychologist Wanhope, and he was saying with a melancholy that mocked itself a little in his smile: “I shouldn’t be particular about seeing a ghost myself. I have seen plenty of men who had seen men who had seen ghosts; but I never yet saw a man who had seen a ghost. If I had it would go a long way to persuade me of ghosts.” Hewson felt his heart thump in his throat. There was a pause, and it was as if all eyes but the eyes of the psychologist turned upon him; these rested upon the ice which the servant had just then silently slipped under them. Hewson had no reason to think that any of the people present were acquainted with his experience, but he thought it safest to take them upon the supposition that they had, and after he had said to the psychologist, “Will you allow me to present him to you?” he added, “I’m afraid every one else knows him too well already.” “You!” said his _vis-à-vis_, arching her eyebrows; and others up and down the table, looked round or over at Hewson where he sat midway of it with Miss Hernshaw drooping beside him. She alone seemed indifferent to his pretension; she seemed even insensible of it, as she broke off little corners of her ice with her fork. The psychologist fixed his eyes on him with scientific challenge as well as scientific interest. “Do you mean that _you_ have seen a ghost?” “Yes--ghost. Generically--provisionally. We always consider them ghosts, don’t we, till they prove themselves something else? I once saw an apparition.”