Her face grew suddenly haggard—yes, haggard! “And the change was so
dreadful that you can’t speak of it? Tell me—was that it?”
I shook my head. After all, what had shocked me was that the change was
so slight—that between being dead and alive there seemed after all to be
so little difference, except that of a mysterious increase in reality.
But Grace’s eyes were still searching me insistently. “You must tell
me,” she reiterated. “I know I ought to have gone there long ago—”
“Yes; perhaps you ought.” I hesitated. “To see about the grave, at
least....”
She sat silent, her eyes still on my face. Her tears had stopped, but
her look of solicitude slowly grew into a stare of something like
terror. Hesitatingly, almost reluctantly, she stretched out her hand and
laid it on mine for an instant. “Dear old friend—” she began.
“Unfortunately,” I interrupted, “I couldn’t get back myself to see the
grave ... because I was taken ill the next day....”
“Yes, yes; of course. I know.” She paused. “Are you _sure_ you went
there at all?” she asked abruptly.
“Sure? Good Lord—” It was my turn to stare. “Do you suspect me of not
being quite right yet?” I suggested with an uneasy laugh.
“No—no ... of course not ... but I don’t understand.”
“Understand what? I went into the house.... I saw everything, in fact,
_but_ her grave....”
“Her grave?” Grace jumped up, clasping her hands on her breast and
darting away from me. At the other end of the room she stood and gazed,
and then moved slowly back.
“Then, after all—I wonder?” She held her eyes on me, half fearful and
half reassured. “Could it be simply that you never heard?”
“Never heard?”
“But it was in all the papers! Don’t you ever read them? I meant to
write.... I thought I _had_ written ... but I said: ‘At any rate he’ll
see it in the papers’.... You know I’m always lazy about letters....”
“See what in the papers?”
“Why, that she _didn’t_ die.... She isn’t dead! There isn’t any grave,
my dear man! It was only a cataleptic trance.... An extraordinary case,
the doctors say.... But didn’t she tell you all about it—if you say you
saw her?” She burst into half-hysterical laughter: “Surely she must have
told you that she wasn’t dead?”
“No,” I said slowly, “she didn’t tell me that.”
We talked about it together for a long time after that—talked on till
Horace came back from his men’s dinner, after midnight. Grace insisted
on going in and out of the whole subject, over and over again. As she
kept repeating, it was certainly the only time that poor Mary had ever
been in the papers. But though I sat and listened patiently I couldn’t
get up any real interest in what she said. I felt I should never again
be interested in Mary Pask, or in anything concerning her.