Every year, the day he walked back from the great graveyard, he went to church as he had done the day his idea was born.

It was on this occasion, as it happened, after a year had passed, that he began to observe his altar to be haunted by a worshipper at least as frequent as himself.

Others of the faithful, and in the rest of the church, came and went, appealing sometimes, when they disappeared, to a vague or to a particular recognition; but this unfailing presence was always to be observed when he arrived and still in possession when he departed.

He was surprised, the first time, at the promptitude with which it assumed an identity for him--the identity of the lady whom two years before, on his anniversary, he had seen so intensely bowed, and of whose tragic face he had had so flitting a vision.

Given the time that had passed, his recollection of her was fresh enough to make him wonder.