“I may be of use,” suggested the little man gravely.  “Besides, I have made up my mind never to quarrel with you again, Unorna.”

“You are wise, my dear friend.  It does no good.  As for your being of use in this case, the most I can hope is that you may find me an explanation of something I cannot understand.”

“I am good at that.  I am particularly good at explanations—­and, generally, at all post facto wisdom.”

“Keyork, do you believe that the souls of the dead can come back and be visible to us?”

Keyork Arabian was silent for a few seconds.

“I know nothing about it,” he answered.

“But what do you think?”

“Nothing.  Either it is possible, or it is not, and until the one proposition or the other is proved I suspend my judgment.  Have you seen a ghost?”

“I do not know.  I have seen something——­” She stopped, as though the recollections were unpleasant.

“Then” said Keyork, “the probability is that you saw a living person.  Shall I sum up the question of ghosts for you?”

“I wish you would, in some way that I can understand.”

“We are, then, in precisely the same position with regard to the belief in ghosts which we occupy towards such questions as the abolition of death.  The argument in both cases is inductive and all but conclusive.  We do not know of any case, in the two hundred generations of men, more or less, with whose history we are in some degree acquainted, of any individual who has escaped death.  We conclude that all men must die.  Similarly, we do not know certainly—­not from real, irrefutable evidence at least—­that the soul of any man or woman dead has ever returned visibly to earth.  We conclude, therefore, that none ever will.  There is a difference in the two cases, which throws a slight balance of probability on the side of the ghost.  Many persons have asserted that they have seen ghosts, though none have ever asserted that men do not die.  For my own part, I have had a very wide, practical, and intimate acquaintance with dead people—­sometimes in very queer places—­but I have never seen anything even faintly suggestive of a ghost.  Therefore, my dear lady, I advise you to take it for granted that you have seen a living person.”

“I never shivered with cold and felt my hair rise upon my head at the sight of any living thing,” said Unorna dreamily, and still shading her eyes with her hand.

“But might you not feel that if you chanced to see some one whom you particularly disliked?” asked Keyork, with a gentle laugh.

“Disliked?” repeated Unorna in a harsh voice.  She changed her position and looked at him.  “Yes, perhaps that is possible.  I had not thought of that.  And yet—­I would rather it had been a ghost.”

“More interesting, certainly, and more novel,” observed Keyork, slowly polishing his smooth cranium with the palm of his hand.  His head, and the perfect hemisphere of his nose, reflected the light like ivory balls of different sizes.