chapter to herself. She "did" for us off and on for several years and then mysteriously disappeared without explanation other than that contained in an observation made to me a few weeks previous, to the effect that the paths of destiny might cross and recross, or run alongside for years, and then separate for ever. It was a prophetic remark.
Bleason loved the mysterious, the elusive. She enjoyed, if not the appearance of evil, certainly that dimness under which it best thrives. It supplied a certain need of her suppressed nature to be round-about and indirect. It afforded her the vicarious savor of life. It gave her a fictitious feeling of importance. I never tried to dig her out of her little secrecies, and to this I attribute the fact of her standing by us so long. For it was part of her code to appear and disappear, leaving trails of uncertainty behind. It was her way of achieving variety and self-importance. She would never give me her address. It savored of dark and devious ways not to do so, and it was an immense nuisance. This was probably what she did it for. Sometimes I almost did suspect her of the guilty past she seemed to indicate, but never quite. Her histrionic
