Bernald returned her look and hesitated. “Do you happen to remember the last thing he said to you--the very last, on the door-step, when he left you?” “The last thing?” She poised her fork above the peach on her plate. “I don’t think he said anything. Oh, yes--when I reminded him that he’d solemnly promised to come back with me and have a little talk he said he couldn’t because he was going home.” “Well, then, I suppose,” said Bernald, “he went home.” She glanced at him as if suspecting a trap. “Dear me, how flat! I always inclined to a mysterious murder. But of course you know more of him than you say.” She began to cut her peach, but paused above a lifted bit to ask, with a renewal of animation in her expressive eyes: “By the way, had you heard that Howland Wade has been gradually getting farther and farther away from Pellerinism? It seems he’s begun to feel that there’s a Positivist element in it which is narrowing to any one who has gone at all deeply into the Wisdom of the East. He was intensely interesting about it the other day, and of course I _do_ see what he feels. ... Oh, it’s too long to tell you now; but if you could manage to come in to tea some afternoon soon--any day but Wednesday--I should so like to explain--” THE EYES I WE had been put in the mood for ghosts, that evening, after an excellent dinner at our old friend Culwin’s, by a tale of Fred Murchard’s--the narrative of a strange personal visitation. Seen through the haze of our cigars, and by the drowsy gleam of a coal fire, Culwin’s library, with its oak walls and dark old bindings, made a good setting for such evocations; and ghostly experiences at first hand being, after Murchard’s brilliant opening, the only kind acceptable to us, we proceeded to take stock of our group and tax each member for a contribution. There were eight of us, and seven contrived, in a manner more or less adequate, to fulfil the condition imposed. It surprised us all to find that we could muster such a show of supernatural impressions, for none of us, excepting Murchard himself and young Phil Frenham--whose story was the slightest of the lot--had the habit of sending our souls into the invisible. So that, on the whole, we had every reason to be proud of our seven “exhibits,” and none of us would have dreamed of expecting an eighth from our host.