Richard Le Gallienne

“ After awhile the woman-ghost said: "Come, let us look at our buried treasure," and she turned to a little urn-shaped box of seventeenth century workmanship, made of wood covered with decorative shapes of beaten copper, and a fantastic lock of iron big enough to belong to the gate of a castle.
"I have two keys to this," she said; "here is one of them. Take it and open the box for us, and then keep the key forever. Here is my own key. No one so long as I live shall look inside this box but you and I. It belongs to us. It is our year. No future has any right over it. ..." ”

“ And, even with a defective memory for sentiment, it surely had been strange if the man-ghost had not responded to the vernal call of resurrection which breathed and piped and fluted and rippled all about them. The whole sunlit world was rising from the dead—might not these two dead ones arise also, and once again be happy together in the sun? All too soon they must die the second death, from which there is no resurrection. Surely this day in the sun might be theirs, the last day they would ever spend in the spring sunshine together. ”

“ There is no real ghost, I need hardly say, that does not own and haunt some buried treasure. Now both these ghosts possessed their buried treasure—treasure which three years ago they had professed to destroy. ”

“ The man-ghost, as I have said, had never really been a ghost, for all the time another living woman had been feeding him with her heart's blood. That was why the woman-ghost, when she first met him again, took him for a living man—and hoped to live again through him. ”

“ For answer the man-ghost took the silver flask by the bottom and held it with the neck downward. It was empty.
"Dear little ghost," he said, "I understand. It has been a wonderful spring day. The spring has turned our heads—but it mustn't turn our hearts. You must catch your train."
In explanation of the conclusion I must add that a ghost, however much it may love another ghost, is anxious above all things to be alive again, alive particularly in the social world. This it can only become by attaching itself to some living person who will give it a simple, undivided love. ”

“ Wise women are not wastefully jealous. They keep their jealousy for really-important occasions.
Both ghosts were very delicate to avoid mention of the status quo, though by every indirect method of which their subtle brains were capable they sought to read each other's minds on the subject—with but little result. The woman-ghost, however, was intuitively aware of a certain stubborn loyalty to the other woman in the man-ghost's carefully chosen words and nimble evasions. ”

“ When they came to the elevator there was the same good boy David running it who had been so kind—in exchange for dollar bills—in the old times. The good David almost fainted at the sight of the man-ghost. ”

“ For answer the man-ghost looked at her a long, long look, and presently asked the waiter to order a hansom to take them to the Grand Central. He could remember the Grand Central—but what on earth was the name of the other station! For, you see, they had been so often into the country together, so often that New York State made a kind of Palestine, sown thick for them with holy places. But which was the holy place connected with April the eighteenth? ”

“ The man, it should be explained, was already engaged when he first met the woman, and had never, during the whole course of his relations with her, the smallest intention of breaking his engagement. But the woman did not know that—and there is, of course, no possible justification for his wicked Don Juan-like attitude, except that, as boys will be boys, men will be men. ”

“ TWO people who had once.loved —or thought they loved—had been dead and buried for three years—that is, to each other. To the rest of the world they seemed vigorously and even gaily above ground, and, at all events, had retained sufficient life in them to get engaged to be married to two other people. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1947, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 75 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”