If my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all
human belief I should apologize to you now. As I know that no
one--no, not even Kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of
justification of my conduct--will believe me, I will go on. Mrs.
Wessington spoke and I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road
to the turning below the Commander-in-Chief's house as I might
walk by the side of any living woman's 'rickshaw, deep in
conversation. The second and most tormenting of my moods of
sickness had suddenly laid hold upon me, and like the Prince in
Tennyson's poem, "I seemed to move amid a world of ghosts."
There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief's, and
we two joined the crowd of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them
then it seemed that _they_ were the shadows--impalpable, fantastic
shadows--that divided for Mrs. Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass
through. What we said during the course of that weird interview I
cannot--indeed, I dare not--tell. Heatherlegh's comment would have
been a short laugh and a remark that I had been "mashing a
brain-eye-and-stomach chimera.
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