"Yes and no. I am sometimes aware of his presence, but I never see him clearly as I did that once. I think at that moment I was able to see him because I was so near death that I was very close to those on the other side of death. My spirit had almost freed itself from the body, so I became visible to him and he to me. I have studied the pictures of Charles the First's time, and his dress was exactly of that date, almost the same as that well-known picture--I think it is Charles the First--of a man with his hand on his hip, standing beside a white horse. Do you think it is wrong of me to have a ghostly lover, who must have lived nearly three hundred years ago?" "Not wrong, but strange. It is a little like "The Brushwood Boy," and "Peter Ibbetson," and Stella Benson's "This is the end." I suppose we have all been on this earth before, but the cup of Lethe is well mixed for most of us, and we have no memory of previous lives. But you have not drunk the cup to the dregs, and somehow you have made a hole in the curtain of oblivion in two places. Through one of those holes you saw one of your many childhoods, probably in Greece, a couple of thousand years ago. Through the other hole you saw, in comparatively modern times your early womanhood. Perhaps you married your beautiful cavalier with the curls." "No," said Essie with decision, "I have never been married to him, or lived in his house. It is my home, but I have never lived there. I know nothing about him except that we love each other, and that some day we shall really meet, not in a dream." "In the Elysian fields?" "Yes, in the Elysian fields." At this moment the front door slammed, and Ted banged up the stairs, and rushed in. If I had not known him I should have said he was drunk. He was wildly excited, he was crimson. He careered round the room waving his arms, and then plumped on to the sofa, and stretched out his short legs in front of him. "I've bought it. I've got it," he shouted. "Do you hear? I've bought it dirt cheap. The young ass is in such a hurry, and he's apparently so wealthy he doesn't care. And two hundred acres of timber with it. Such timber. Such walnut, and chestnut and oak. The timber alone is worth the money, I've got it. It's mine." "The house in Essex?" "Kenstone Manor, in Essex. It's a nailer. It's a--a--an old world residence. It has no central heating, no bathrooms, no electric light, obsolete drainage and the floors are giving way. I shall have to put in everything, but I shall do it without spending a penny. I shall do it by the timber, and it's nine miles from a station, that's partly why no one wanted it. But the railroad is coming. No one knows that yet except a few of us, but it will be there in five years, with a station on the property. Then I shall sell all the land within easy reach of the station in small building lots for villas. I shall make a pile."