Meantime, in the course of wanderings more or less aimless, there has slowly grown upon you a suspicion of being haunted--so frequently does a certain hazy presence intrude itself upon the visual memory. This, however, appears to gain rather than to lose in definiteness; with each return its visibility seems to increase. And the suspicion that you may be haunted gradually develops into a certainty. III You are haunted--whether your way lie through the brown gloom of London winter, or the azure splendor of an equatorial day--whether your steps be tracked in snows, or in the burning black sand of a tropic beach--whether you rest beneath the swart shade of Northern pines, or under spidery umbrages of palm--you are haunted ever and everywhere by a certain gentle presence. There is nothing fearsome in this haunting--the gentlest face, the kindliest voice--oddly familiar and distinct, though feeble as the hum of a bee. But it tantalizes--this haunting--like those sudden surprises of sensation _within_ us, though seemingly not _of_ us, which some dreamers have sought to interpret as inherited remembrances, recollections of preexistence. Vainly you ask yourself, "Whose voice? Whose face?" It is neither young nor old, the Face; it has a vapory indefinableness that leaves it a riddle; its diaphaneity reveals no particular tint; perhaps you may not even be quite sure whether it has a beard. But its expression is always gracious, passionless, smiling--like the smiling of unknown friends in dreams, with infinite indulgence for any folly, even a dream-folly. Except in that you cannot permanently banish it, the presence offers no positive resistance to your will; it accepts each caprice with obedience; it meets your every whim with angelic patience. It is never critical, never makes plaint even by a look, never proves irksome; yet you cannot ignore it, because of a certain queer power it possesses to make something stir and quiver in your heart--like an old vague sweet regret--something buried alive which will not die. And so often does this happen that desire to solve the riddle becomes a pain; that you finally find yourself making supplication to the Presence; addressing to it questions which it will never answer directly, but only by a smile or by words having no relation to the asking--words enigmatic, which make mysterious agitation in old forsaken fields of memory, even as a wind betimes, over wide wastes of marsh, sets all the grasses whispering about nothing. But you will question on, untiringly, through the nights and days of years: