Interested and happy!  She was a typical product of Victoria’s reign, a beautiful creature whose faith was pinned to the most unimportant things—­class, position, a snobbish religion, a traditional morality and her own place in an intricate little world of ladies and gentlemen.  God save us!  What was Cecil Grimshaw going to do in an atmosphere of titled bores, bishops, military men, and cautious statesmen?  I could fancy him in his new town house, struggling through some endless dinner party—­his cynical, stone-gray eyes sweeping up and down the table, his lips curled in that habitual sneer, his mind, perhaps, gone back to the red-and-blue room in Chelsea, where he had been wont to stand astride before the black mantel, bellowing indecencies into the ears of witty modernists.  Could he bellow any longer?

Apparently not.  I heard of him now and then from this friend and that.  He was indeed “behaving” well.  He wrote nothing to shock the sensibilities of his wife’s world—­a few fantastic short stories, touched with a certain childish spirituality, and that was all.  They say that he bent his manners to hers—­a tamed centaur grazing with a milk-white doe.  He grew a trifle fat.  Quite like a model English husband, he called Dagmar “My dear” and drove with her in the Park at the fashionable hour, his hands crossed on the head of his cane, his eyes half closed.  She wrote me:  “I am completely happy.  So is Cecil.  Surely he can have made no mistake in marrying me.”

You all know that this affectation of respectability did not last long—­not more than five years; long enough for the novelty to wear off.  The genius or the devil that was in Cecil Grimshaw made its reappearance.  He was tossed out of Dagmar’s circle like a burning rock hurled from the mouth of a crater; he fell into Chelsea again.  Esther Levenson had come back from the States and was casting about for a play.  She sought out Grimshaw and with her presence, her grace and pallor and seduction, lured him into his old ways.  “The leaves are yellow,” he said to her, “but still they dance in a south wind.  The altar fires are ash and grass has grown upon the temple floor——­ I have been away too long.  Get me my pipe, you laughing dryad, and I will play for you.”

He played for her and all England heard.  Dagmar heard and pretended acquiescence.  According to her lights, she was magnificent—­she invited Esther Levenson to Broadenham, the Grimshaw place in Kent, nor did she wince when the actress accepted.  When I got back to England, Dagmar was fighting for his soul with all the weapons she had.  I went to see her in her cool little town house, that house so typical of her, so untouched by Grimshaw.  And, looking at me with steady eyes, she said:  “I’m sorry Cecil isn’t here.  He’s writing again—­a play—­for Esther Levenson, who was Simonetta, you remember?”

I promised you a ghost story.  If it is slow in coming, it is because all these things have a bearing on the mysterious, the extraordinary things that happened——­