“It goes back to the time when I first saw you,” she continued, now speaking quickly as though anxious to get it over—­“You will perhaps hardly remember the occasion.  It was at that great art and society “crush” in London where there was such a crowd that hundreds of people never got farther than the staircase.  You were pointed out to me as a “psychist”—­and while I was still listening to what was being said about you, my father came up with you on his arm and introduced us.  When I saw you I felt that your features were somehow familiar,—­though I could not tell where I had met you before,—­and I became very anxious to see more of you.  In fact, you had a perfect fascination for me!  You have the same fascination now,—­only it is a fascination that terrifies me!”

I was silent.

“The other night,” she went on—­“when Mr. Santoris first came on board I had a singular impression that he was or had been an enemy of mine,—­though where or how I could not say.  It was this that frightened me, and made me too ill and nervous to go with you on that excursion to Loch Coruisk.  And I want to get away from him!  I never had such impressions before—­and even now,—­looking at you,—­I feel there’s something in you which is quite “uncanny,”—­it troubles me!  Oh!—­I’m sure you mean me no harm—­you are bright and amiable and adaptable and all that—­but—­I’m afraid of you!”

“Poor Catherine!” I said, very gently—­“These are merely nervous ideas!  There is nothing to fear from me—­no, nothing!” For here she suddenly leaned forward and took my hand, looking earnestly in my face—­“How can you imagine such a thing possible?”

“Are you sure?” she half whispered—­“When I called you “pagan” just now I had a sort of dim recollection of a fair woman like you,—­a woman I seemed to know who was really a pagan!  Yet I don’t know how I knew her, or where I met her—­a woman who, for some reason or other, was hateful to me because I was jealous of her!  These curious fancies have haunted my mind only since that man Santoris came on board,—­and I told Dr. Brayle exactly what I felt.”

“And what did he say?” I asked.

“He said that it was all the work of Santoris, who was an evident professor of psychical imposture—­”

I sprang up.

“Let him say that to me!” I exclaimed—­“Let him dare to say it! and I will prove who is the impostor to his face!”

She retreated from me with wide-open eyes of alarm.

“Why do you look at me like that?” she said.  “We didn’t really kill you—­except—­in a dream!”

A sudden silence fell between us; something cold and shadowy and impalpable seemed to possess the very air.  If by some supernatural agency we had been momentarily deprived of life and motion, while a vast dark cloud, heavy with rain, had made its slow way betwixt us, the sense of chill and depression could hardly have been greater.

Presently Catherine spoke again, with a little forced laugh.