Then he thought of her with a fantastic longing that seemed to him beautiful, immaterial, and innocent.  He said to himself, “I don’t shirk my punishment.  I’m going to take it.  But fair’s fair—­There’s no occasion to make myself out worse than I really am.  Norah has taken hold of me a great deal more by my int’lect than by the low animal kind of feelings that are the mark of the abject sinner.  I can’t live without her; but if I might live with her, I feel I could be content to let it all remain quite innocent between us.  Yes, I feel I could be happy with her just as a companion, provided she and I were alone together, far away from everybody else—­yes, I’d take my happiness on those terms, that she was never to be anything else to me but just that.”

But soon those treacherous nerves restored themselves, the upper and lower parts of him were all one again, and the diffuse yet darting pain returned.  Anger came too.  It seemed that the dead man mocked him, went on softly laughing at him.

“What a humbug you are”—­he gave the dead man words—­“what a colossal humbug.  You and your nice Sunday go-to-meeting thoughts.  It’s so easy, isn’t it? to dress up one’s rottenness in pretty sentimental twaddle.  But you don’t deceive anybody.  You don’t even deceive yourself, not for three minutes at a stretch.  You know that underneath all your humbugging pretenses the black sin is unchanged.  You are no better and no worse than I was.  You are exactly the same as me.”

And Dale, breaking his own rule, or forgetting in his anger that he had refused to discuss things with this imaginary voice, answered wrathfully.

“This girl cares for me—­that’s the difference between us.  She offers me love.  And that’s something you never had.”

“How do you know?” said the dead man.  “Your Mavis was one of many.  And, besides, don’t be so sure that Mavis wasn’t fond of me.  She never ran away from me.  She came when I whistled for her.”

Dale brandished his arms wildly, turned round, and stared at the pine-trees and the bracken.  It seemed to him that some imperishable essence of the man was really here, mingling with the shadows, floating in the dusky air; and that possibly over there among the rocks, if one went to look for it, one might see a simulacrum of the man’s bodily shape—­perhaps only a gray shadowy outlined form, the odious stranger of dreams, but more vague than in the dreams, stretched on his back, holding up his blood-stained boots, and grinning all over his battered face.

“Yes, perhaps so,” said the voice.  “But I notice that you don’t come in to look for me.  You keep to the ride still.  Now you’ve got so very close to me, why do you turn shy of the last little bit?  Is it that you wish me to save you trouble by showing myself?”

And Dale made gestures of semi-insane fury, and spoke in a loud, hoarse voice.

“Yes, show yourself if you want to.  You ‘aarve my leave.  Come out an’ stan’ here before me.  I’m not afraid of you—­now or hereafter.”