“I’m looking for something good and dull,” Verrian said, when the woman was gone.

“Travels are good, or narratives, for sleeping on,” she said, with a breathless effort for calm.  “I found,” she panted, “in my own insomnia, that merely the broken-up look of a page of dialogue in a novel racked my nerves so that I couldn’t sleep.  But narratives were beautifully soothing.”

“Thank you,” he responded; “that’s a good idea.”  And stooping, with his hands on his knees, he ranged back and forth along the shelves.  “But Mrs. Westangle’s library doesn’t seem to be very rich in narrative.”

He had not his mind on the search perhaps, and perhaps she knew it.  She presently said, “I wish I dared ask you a favor—­I mean your advice, Mr. Verrian.”

He lifted himself from his stooping posture and looked at her, smiling.  “Would that take much courage?” His smile was a little mocking; he was thinking that a girl who would hurry that note to him, and would personally see that it did not fail to reach him, would have the courage for much more.

She did not reply directly.  “I should have to explain, but I know you won’t tell.  This is going to be my piece de resistance, my grand stunt.  I’m going to bring it off the last night.”  She stopped long enough for Verrian to revise his resolution of going away with the fellows who were leaving the middle of the week, and to decide on staying to the end.  “I am going to call it Seeing Ghosts.”

“That’s good,” Verrian said, provisionally.

“Yes, I might say I was surprised at my thinking it up.”

“That would be one form of modesty.”

“Yes,” she said, with a wan smile she had, “and then again it mightn’t be another.”  She went on, abruptly, “As many as like can take part in the performance.  It’s to be given out, and distinctly understood beforehand, that the ghost isn’t a veridical phantom, but just an honest, made-up, every-day spook.  It may change its pose from time to time, or its drapery, but the setting is to be always the same, and the people who take their turns in seeing it are to be explicitly reassured, one after another, that there’s nothing in it, you know.  The fun will be in seeing how each one takes it, after they know what it really is.”

“Then you’re going to give us a study of temperaments.”

“Yes,” she assented.  And after a moment, given to letting the notion get quite home with her, she asked, vividly, “Would you let me use it?”

“The phrase?  Why, certainly.  But wouldn’t it be rather too psychological?  I think just Seeing Ghosts would be better.”

“Better than Seeing Ghosts:  A Study of Temperaments?  Perhaps it would.  It would be simpler.”

“And in this house you need all the simplicity you can get,” he suggested.

She smiled, intelligently but reticently.  “My idea is that every one somehow really believes in ghosts—­I know I do—­and so fully expects to see one that any sort of make-up will affect them for the moment just as if they did see one.  I thought—­that perhaps—­I don’t know how to say it without seeming to make use of you—­”