compelled to regain his circle, or Purgatory, or Styx, whatever
you like to call it, via consciousness. No one present, then no
revenant or spook, or astral body, or hallucination: what's in a
name? And of course even an hallucination is mind-stuff, and on
its own, as it were. What I mean is that the poor devil must have
some kind of human personality to get back through in order to
make his exit from our sphere of consciousness into his. And
naturally, of course to make his entrance too. If like a tenuous
smoke he can get in, the probability is that he gets out in
precisely the same fashion. For really, if you weren't
consciously expecting the customary impact (you actually jerk
forward in the act of resistance unresisted), you would not
notice his going. I am afraid I must be horribly boring you with
all these tangled theories. All I mean is, that if you were
really absorbed in what you happened to be doing at the time, the
thing might come and go, with your mind for entrance and exit, as
it were, without your being conscious of it at all.' There was a
longish pause, in which Herbert slowly inhaled and softly breathed
out his smoke.

'And what--what is the poor wretch searching FOR? And what--why,
what becomes of him when he does go?'

'Ah, there you have me! One merely surmises just as one's
temperament or convictions lean. Grisel says it's some poor
derelict soul in search of peace--that the poor beggar wants
finally to die, in fact, and can't. Sallie smells crime. After
all, what is every man?' he talked on; 'a horde of ghosts--like a
Chinese nest of boxes--oaks that were acorns that were oaks.
Death lies behind us, not in front--in our ancestors, back and