"Your candour requires no apology, Martelli," I answered. "I am sure you speak for my good, and I am grateful for the interest you take in me. But I must tell you that this woman has occupied my thoughts so long, that it is become a positive necessity to know her. Don't smile at what I am about to say--I protest, for my part, I was never more in earnest--I believe," I said solemnly, "that this woman is to be an influence on my life--though whether baneful or benignant is still the secret of the future. Why do you shrug your shoulders? Don't you believe in presentiments--in the power of the soul to foreshadow destiny? A few hours before I met her--this lady--she presented herself to me in a dream. Your sceptical mind would pronounce this a coincidence--the very dream, you think, might have generated the subsequent vision. But it was no coincidence. It was the operation of some mystic agency, to be credited without questioning; an agency as definite, though inscrutable, as the soul which informs our being with the knowledge of its existence, but ridicules our efforts to give that knowledge shape." "Have you ever sought to meet her again?" "I have not dared." "Not _dared_!" "You are surprised. But I had not Hamlet's resolution: "'Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou comest in such questionable shape, I _dare not_ speak to thee!' Martelli, had I met her close again, as I met her that night, I should have gone mad. Her steady supernatural gaze, her rigid mien, her shape, which united the two extremes of spectral beauty and human sweetness, were shocking." "Would you fear to meet her if you had a companion." "I hardly know. Pray applaud my candour; you see I confess myself a coward." "It is no proof of cowardice. A brave man might reasonably recoil from encountering such an airy horror as enlivened your midnight ramble. As for me, I have no fear of ghost or goblin. A questionable shape would make me curious, not timid. Here, however, we should be dealing with no shadow. A phantom might, indeed, be a widow, though, it is said, that owing to the scarcity of priests, there are no marriages in Heaven. But it would hardly bear the name of 'Mrs. Fraser,' when it has a magnificent mythology to choose from. At what time did you say you met her?" "It was two o'clock in the morning." "A rather inconvenient hour," he exclaimed with a laugh. "Would not ten or eleven o'clock suit her as well? But it is enough that she should be a woman to be perverse. If you think that there is any chance of our meeting her to-night, I should be glad to accompany you. Two heads are better than one in a business of this kind." "I am willing to go. Yet there is no reason why she should be there." "We shall have the moon with us, at all events," he said; "for there she is, crawling up yonder, though with a sinister disc."