OR two or three days after this fright Pamela was nervous and shaken. I was careful to take her into the country for a good walk every evening; and her healthy nerves soon recovered their tone. If they had not, I would have married her out of hand and taken her away from No. 19. It would have meant a tussle with Woodfell; and he was likely to prove no mean fighter. But for that I did not care. I should have had every right, except, perhaps, a mere legal one, to take her from a house which was wrecking her health. But a week assured me that it was not wrecking it; the fright she had suffered had been the result of Woodf ell's carelessness, and he would not be careless again. Several months had still to elapse before another celebration of the rites of the Abyss. It seemed safe to wait.
One evening a fortnight later Pamela and I were in my study after dinner; and there came a knocking at my front door. I went to the window, looked through the side of the blind and saw Woodfell. It was a startling sight.
"It's your uncle!" I said; and we looked at one another with some dismay. Then I said, "Oh, it's all right. He hasn't come after you. If he had, he would have come sooner. He must be merely returning my visit."
"Yes; that must be it," said Pamela, but she looked scared enough.
"Well, you'd better go into the dining-room; and if I can get him into the study, you can slip out and into No. 19," I said quickly. I opened the study door and stood still while she slipped along the wall of the hall behind me into the dining-room. Then I opened the front door.
"Good evening," said "Woodfell. "I hope it isn't too late to pay you a visit. But I felt a strong need on me to talk to someone; and my niece has gone to bed."
"Not at all too late. I'm delighted that you came," I said cordially. And I was. I welcomed the opportunity of learning more of him.
I ushered him into my study; and he sat down in an easy chair.
He looked about the room with approving eyes; sank back in the easy chair as if he found himself in a place to his liking, and said, "I've been wondering at your courage in coming into my study and staying in it that night. It must have required a strong effort of will—an uncommonly strong effort of will."
"It was uncomfortable," I said.
"Uncomfortable!" he said with a short laugh. "Devilishly uncomfortable, I should think."
"It was."
He nodded his head. "I've been wondering, too, how it affected you exactly, and what you saw."
"It affected me with a cold perspiration; and I saw shadows—shapeless shadows," I said.
"Ah, they were shapeless? I wondered," he said slowly.
He paused, thinking; then he said, "What did you think of them?"
"I thought they were devils," I said promptly.
He laughed his short laugh and said, "Well, perhaps it's as good a name for them as any other. Certainly they were called devils for a good many hundreds of years."
"Then there were things there," I said quickly.
"Things, or shadows of things—you saw."
"I felt even more than I saw," I said slowly. "But you—when you came to, you saw the things of which I only saw the shadows?"
"How does one know what one sees? Perhaps I saw shadows more clearly shaped—once beyond the tangible, the thing you can touch and handle, how can you say whether you see, or whether you fancy?"
"That's what I have thought myself," I said.
"Then you've certainly been talking to that sceptic Marks," he said smiling.
"Oh, yes," I said. "I have talked to him about these matters. But if your shadows took on flesh; then you would know."
He rose in a sudden restlessness, and walked across the room:—
"If they took on flesh for you in your sober senses, you might know. But suppose that a degree of nervous exultation, illumination, ecstasy, intoxication, call it what you will, were necessary to that incarnation. Then what can you say?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "You get results even then," I said.
"Results? Yes. But the question is not what you get, but what it's worth."
"I think—I think that you're not like Marks—you don't believe that it's all fancy," I said slowly.
"You're shrewd," he said in some surprise. "That shows insight. If I may ask, what is your business or profession1?"
"I'm a lawyer."
"Heavens!" he said and laughed.
I laughed, too.
"Well, I like you," hp said after a pause. "You said nothing to Marks about that other fancy of yours—the beast in my garden. I like a man who can keep his mouth shut till he has a reason for speaking. Though it would have been safe enough to tell Marks. He is to be trusted—absolutely. And he knows."