be--awful.

An authentic, guaranteed, proved ghost, but; only a ghost, alas!
Only that. In his first visit Soames was a creature of flesh and blood,
whereas the creatures among whom he was projected were but ghosts, I
take it--solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts, in a
building that was itself an illusion. Next time that building and those
creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be but the
semblance. I wish I could think him destined to revisit the world
actually, physically, consciously. I wish he had this one brief escape, this
one small treat, to look forward to. I never forget him for long. He is
where he is and forever. The more rigid moralists among you may say he
has only himself to blame. For my part, I think he has been very hardly
used. It is well that vanity should be chastened; and Enoch Soames's
vanity was, I admit, above the average, and called for special treatment.
But there was no need for vindictiveness. You say he contracted to pay
the price he is paying. Yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so
by fraud. Well informed in all things, the devil must have known that my
friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a
very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the devil
seems to me.

Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since that
day at the Vingtieme. Only once, however, have I seen him at
close quarters. This was a couple of years ago, in Paris. I was walking
one afternoon along the rue d'Antin, and I saw him advancing from the
opposite direction, overdressed as ever, and swinging an ebony cane and
altogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. At
thought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in
this brute's dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and I drew myself up