He passed an unsteady hand over his forehead.
"For a moment we looked full at one another," he continued. "I got red, sir; I felt it, and I couldn't look away. And when I turned color like a blooming beet, she began to turn pink like a rosebud, and she looked full into my eyes with such a wonderful purity, such exquisite innocence, that I--I never felt so near--er--heaven in my life! No, sir, not even when they ambushed us at Manoa Wells--but that's another thing--only it is part of this business."
He tightened his clasped hands over his knee until the knuckles whitened.
"_That's_ my story, Mr. Keen," he said crisply.
Harren looked at the floor, then at Keen: "No, not all. You'll think me a lunatic if I tell you all."
Harren stirred uneasily. "I don't know what you call them. I have seen her since--in the sunlight, in the open, in my quarters in Manila, standing there perfectly distinct, looking at me with such strange, beautiful eyes--"
"What else is there to say?" muttered Harren.
"You saw her--or a phantom which resembled her. Did she speak?"
"No--I don't know. I--I didn't see her any more."
"No. I can't explain. She--there was only myself in the room."
"How many times has she appeared to you?"
"Yes. And in the road under a vertical sun; in the forest, in the paddy fields. I have seen her passing through the hallway of a friend's house--turning on the stair to look back at me! I saw her standing just back of the firing-line at Manoa Wells when we were preparing to rush the forts, and it scared me so that I jumped forward to draw her back. But--she wasn't there, Mr. Keen. . . .
"On the transport she stood facing me on deck one moonlit evening for five minutes. I saw her in 'Frisco; she sat in the Pullman twice between Denver and this city. Twice in my room at the Vice-Regent she has sat opposite me at midday, so clear, so beautiful, so real that--that I could scarcely believe she was only a--a--" He hesitated.
"The apparition of her own subconscious self," said the Tracer quietly. "Science has been forced to admit such things, and, as you know, we are on the verge of understanding the alphabet of some of the unknown forces which we must some day reckon with."
Harren, tense, a trifle pale, gazed at him earnestly.