“I did,” said Helen.  “Of course, had I known how ill he was, poor old boy, I should have been more patient.  But I have a little son to consider now, as well as Ronnie.  I did think him selfish, and I do.”

“My dear angel,” said Dr. Dick, “we are all selfish, every mother’s son of us; and it is you blessed women who make us so.”

She looked at him, with softening eyes. “You are not selfish, Dick,” she said.

“I am,” he answered; “and a long chalk worse than Ronnie.  I combine ambition with my selfishness.  I jolly well mean to get to the top of the tree, and I don’t care how I get there.  I down every one who dares stand in my way; or—­I use them as stepping-stones.  There!  Isn’t that a worse Upas tree than poor old Ronnie’s?  Mine is a life untouched by love, or any gentler feelings.  All that sort of thing was killed in me when I was quite a little chap.  It is the story of a broken halo.  Perhaps I’ll tell it you some day.  Meanwhile, this being Christmas Eve and not Ash Wednesday, I’ll make no more confessions.  Don’t you want to hear the result of my psychic investigations, concerning our mirror experiences?”

“Exceedingly,” said Helen.  “Have you time to tell me now?”

“Heaps of time.  It won’t take long.  Last night I told the whole story to a man who makes a special study of these matters, and knows more about things psychic than any other man in England.  The Brands asked me to dinner and arranged to have him also.  After dinner he and I went down alone to the doctor’s consulting room, and talked the whole thing out.  I was careful to mention no names.  You don’t want to be credited with a haunted room at the Grange, neither do we want Ronnie’s name mixed up with psychical phenomena.  Now I will give you this man’s opinion and explanation, exactly as he gave it to me.  Only, remember, I pass it on as his.  I do not necessarily endorse it.

“He holds that inanimate objects, such as beds, walls, cupboards, staircases, have a power of receiving, absorbing and retaining impressions transmitted to them through contact with human minds in extreme conditions of stress and tension.  This would especially be the case with intimately personal things, such as musical instruments, or favourite chairs.  Old rooms and ancient furniture might retain these impressions for centuries; and, under certain circumstances, transmit them to any mind, with which they came in contact, happening to be strung up to the right key to respond to the psychic impression.  He considers that this theory accounts for practically all ghost stories and haunted rooms, passages, and staircases.  It reduces all apparitions to the subjective rather than the objective plane; in other words the spirit of a murdered man does not return at certain times to the room in which he was done to death; but his agonised mind, in its last conscious moments, left an impress upon that room which produces a subjective picture