increased vivacity, and an air of menace, as if it were always brooding
over some atrocious plan. Its eyes, as before, were never off me."

"Is it here now?" I asked.

"No," he replied, "it has been absent exactly a fortnight and a
day--fifteen days. It has sometimes been away so long as nearly two
months, once for three. Its absence always exceeds a fortnight, although
it may be but by a single day. Fifteen days having past since I saw it
last, it may return now at any moment."

"Is its return," I asked, "accompanied by any peculiar manifestation?"

"Nothing--no," he said. "It is simply with me again. On lifting my eyes
from a book, or turning my head, I see it, as usual, looking at me, and
then it remains, as before, for its appointed time. I have never told so
much and so minutely before to any one."

I perceived that he was agitated, and looking like death, and he
repeatedly applied his handkerchief to his forehead; I suggested that he
might be tired, and told him that I would call, with pleasure, in the
morning, but he said:

"No, if you don't mind hearing it all now. I have got so far, and I
should prefer making one effort of it. When I spoke to Dr. Harley, I had
nothing like so much to tell. You are a philosophic physician. You give
spirit its proper rank. If this thing is real--"

He paused looking at me with agitated inquiry.