Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (124 page)

I
burst
out
laughing.
"Lithway,
come
away
with
me.
Solitude
is getting
on
your
nerves.
We'll
go
to
Germany
and
look
after
your little
cousin
and
the
aunt
who
writes
such
wonderful
letters."

"No."
Lithway
was
firm.
"It's
too
much
like
work."

I
was
serious,
for
he
really
seemed
to
me,
at
the
time
of
this
visit, in
rather
a
bad
way.
I
urged
him
with
every
argument
I
could
think of.
He
had
no
counter-arguments,
but
finally
he
broke
out:
"Well, if
you
will
have
it,
I
feel
safer
here."

"You've
never
seen
her
anywhere
else,
have
you?"

"No."

"Then
this
seems
to
be
the
one
point
of
danger."
"Wender's
theory
is
that
-----
"
he
began.

But
I
persisted
in
not
hearing
Wender's
theory.
Even
when,
a week
later,
my
own
experience
was
exactly
duplicated
and
I
had spent
another
day
in
watching
a
white
line
fade
off
my
forehead,
I still
persisted.
But,
as
Lithway
wouldn't
leave
the
house,
I
did.
I
began even
to
have
a
sneaking
sympathy
for
Wender.
But
I
didn't
want
to hear
his
theory.
Indeed,
to
this
day
I
never
have
heard
it.
Oddly enough,
though,
I
should
be
willing
to
wager
a
good
sum
that
it
was accurate.
    
,

I
was
arranging
for
a
considerable
flight—something
faddier
and more
dangerous
than
I
had
hitherto
attempted—and
to
a
friend
as indolent
as
Lithway
I
could
only
prepare
to
bid
a
long
farewell.
He positively
refused
to
accompany
me
even
on
the
earlier
and
less difficult
stages
of
my
journey.
"I'll
stick
to
my
home,"
he
declared. It
was
a
queer
home
to
want
to
stick
to,
I
thought
privately,
especially as
the
ghost
was
obviously
local.
He
had
never
seen
an
apparition except
at
Braythe—nor
had
I,
nor
had
Wender.
I
worried
about leaving
him
there,
for
the
one
danger
I
apprehended
was
the
danger of
overwrought
nerves;
but
Lithway
refused
to
budge,
and
you
can't coerce
a
sane
and
able-bodied
man
with
a
private
fortune.
I
did
carry my
own
precautions
to
the
point
of
looking
up
the
history
of
the house.
The
man
from
whom
Lithway
had
bought
it,
while
it
was
still unfinished,
had
intended
it
for
his
own
occupancy;
but
a
lucrative post
in
a
foreign
country
had
determined
him
to
leave
America.
The very
architect
was
a
churchwarden,
the
husband
of
one
wife
and
the father
of
eight
children.
I
even
hunted
up
the
contractor:
not
one accident
had
occurred
while
the
house
was
building,
and
he
had employed
throughout,
most
amicably,
union
labor
on
its
own
terms. It
was
silly
of
me,
if
you
like,
but
I
had
really
been
shaken
by
the unpleasant
powers
of
the
place.
After
my
researches
it
seemed
clear that
in
objecting
to
it
any
further
I
shouldn't
have
a
leg
to
stand
on. In
any
case,
Lithway
would
probably
rather
live
in
a
chamel-house than
move.
I
had
to
wash
my
hands
of
it
all.