" There had been a garden-party at the Commander-in-Chief's, and we two
joined the crowd of homeward-bound folk. As I saw them then it seemed that
they were the shadows--impalpable, fantastic shadows--that divided for Mrs.
Wessington's 'rickshaw to pass through. What we said during the course of that
weird interview I cannot--indeed, I dare not--tell. Heatherlegh's comment
would have been a short laugh and a remark that I had been "mashing a brain-
eye-and-stomach chimera." It was a ghastly and yet in some indefinable way a
marvelously dear experience. Could it be possible, I wondered, that I was in
this life to woo a second time the woman I had killed by my own neglect and
cruelty?
I met Kitty on the homeward road--a shadow among shadows.
If I were to describe all the incidents of the next fortnight in their order,
my story would never come to an end; and your patience would he exhausted.
Morning after morning and evening after evening the ghostly 'rickshaw and I
used to wander through Simla together. Wherever I went there the four black
and white liveries followed me and bore me company to and from my hotel. At
the Theatre I found them amid the crowd of yelling jhampanies; outside the
Club veranda, after a long evening of whist; at the Birthday Ball, waiting
patiently for my reappearance; and in broad daylight when I went calling.
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