even upon evidence granted to few. Superficially, however, as well as
interiorly, he was aware of always expecting its repetition; and now, six
months after the occurrence this expectation was as vivid with him as it
was the first moment after the vision had vanished, while his tongue was
yet in act to stay it with speech. He would not have been surprised at
any time in walking into his room to find It there; or waking at night to
confront It in the electric flash which he kindled by a touch of the
button at his bedside. Rather, he was surprised that nothing of the sort
happened, to confirm him in his belief that he had been all but in touch
with the other life, or to give him some hint, the slightest, the
dimmest, why this vision had been shown him, and then instantly broken
and withdrawn. In that inmost of his where he recognized its validity, he
could not deny that it had a meaning, and that it had been sent him for
some good reason special to himself; though at the times when he had
prefaced his story of it with terms of slighting scepticism, he had
professed neither to know nor to care why the thing had happened. He
always said that he had never been particularly interested in the
supernatural, and then was ashamed of a lie that was false to universal
human experience; but he could truthfully add that he had never in his
life felt less like seeing a ghost than that morning. It was not full
day, but it was perfectly light, and there the thing was, as palpable to
vision as any of the men that moment confronting him with cocktails in
their hands. Asked if he did not think he had dreamed it, he answered
scornfully that he did not think, he _knew_, he had not dreamed it; he
did not value the experience, it was and had always been perfectly
meaningless, but he would stake his life upon its reality. Asked if it
had not perhaps been the final office of a nightcap, he disdained to
answer at all, though he did not openly object to the laugh which the
suggestion raised.