CHAPTER V.
One afternoon Renouard stepping out on the terrace found nobody there.
It was for him, at the same time, a melancholy disappointment and a poignant relief.
The heat was great, the air was still, all the long windows of the house stood wide open.

At the further end, grouped round a lady's work-table, several chairs disposed sociably suggested invisible occupants, a company of conversing shades.

Renouard looked towards them with a sort of dread.
A most elusive, faint sound of ghostly talk issuing from one of the rooms added to the illusion and stopped his already hesitating footsteps.

He leaned over the balustrade of stone near a squat vase holding a tropical plant of a bizarre shape.

Professor Moorsom coming up from the garden with a book under his arm and a white parasol held over his bare head, found him there and, closing the parasol, leaned over by his side with a remark on the increasing heat of the season.