V.


At this point Wanhope hesitated with a kind of diffidence that was rather
charming in him. "I don't see," he said, "just how I can keep the facts
from this on out of the line of facts which we are not in the habit of
respecting very much, or that we relegate to the company of things that
are not facts at all. I suppose that in stating them I shall somehow make
myself responsible for them, but that is just what I don't want to do. I
don't want to do anything more than give them as they were given to me."

"You won't be able to give them half as fully," said Minver, "if Mrs.
Ormond gave them to you."

"No," Wanhope said gravely, "and that's the pity of it; for they ought to
be given as fully as possible."

"Go ahead," Rulledge commanded, "and do the best you can." "I'm not
sure," the psychologist thoughtfully said, "that I am quite satisfied to
call Ormond's experiences hallucinations. There ought to be some other
word that doesn't accuse his sanity in that degree. For he apparently
didn't show any other signs of an unsound mind."

"None that Mrs. Ormond would call so," Minver suggested.

"Well, in his case, I don't think she was such a bad judge," Wanhope
returned. "She was a tolerably unbalanced person herself, but she wasn't
altogether disqualified for observing him, as I've said before. They had
a pretty hot summer, as the summer is apt to be in the Housatonic valley,