white liveries followed me and bore me company to and from my hotel. At the Theatre I found them amid the crowd or yelling jhampanies; outside the Club verandah, after a long evening of whist; at the Birthday Ball waiting patiently for my reappearance; and in broad daylight when I went calling. Save that it cast no shadow it was in every respect as real to look upon as a 'rickshaw of wood and iron. More than once indeed I have had to check myself from warning some hard-riding friend against cantering over it. More than once I have walked down the Mall deep in conversation with Mrs. Wessington to the unspeakable amazement of the passers by. Before I had been out and about a week I learned that the "fit" theory had been discarded in favour of the "slightly-touched but good-sort-of-fellow" one. However, I made no change in my mode of life. I called, rode, and dined out as freely as ever. I had a passion for the society of my kind which I had never felt before; I hungered to be among the realities of life; and at the same time I felt vaguely uncomfortable when I had been separated too long from my ghostly companion. It would be almost impossible to describe my varying moods from the 15th of May up to the present date.
The presence of the 'rickshaw filled me by turns with horror, blind fear, a dim sort of pleasure and utter despair. I dared not leave Simla; and I knew that my stay there was killing me. I knew, moreover, that it was my destiny to die slowly and a little every day. My only anxiety was to get the penance over as swiftly and quietly as might be. Alternately I hungered for a sight of Kitty and watched her outrageous flirtations with my successor—or, to speak more accurately, my successors—with amused interest. She was as much out of my life as I was out of hers. By day I wandered with Mrs. Wessington almost content. By night I implored Heaven to let me return to the world as I used to know it. Above all these varying moods lay the sensation of dull, numbing wonder that the Seen and the Unseen should mingle so strangely on this earth to hound one poor soul to its grave. *** Heatherlegh has been indefatigable in his attendance on me; and only yesterday told me that I ought to get up for a little and send in an application for sick leave. An application to escape the company of a phantom! A request that the Punjab Government would graciously permit me to get rid of five ghosts and an airy
