She searched the shelves briefly and returned the book to the empty space it had left. The one next to it was called Historic British Ghosts. Sabrina went on with her dusting, silent and very thoughtful.

The misplaced and forgotten book was the third tangible evidence of his actual presence in the room, without counting Muffin’s behavior. And each time the same suffocating excitement pervaded her, which contained no element of fear. Each time too he seemed almost to emerge a little from invisibility. And meanwhile Muffin showed her where he sat. It seemed impossible now that if she turned suddenly to the window seat and asked him a question he should not answer.

She approached the kitten, who lay on his side slapping happily with soft paws at elusive fingers to his left. She sat down on the other side of him, and the kitten grew quiet as the game stopped. Suddenly she laid her hand on Muffin’s warm fur, and Hilary’s fingers slid away from under hers with only an inch to spare.

“No,” he said quickly. “You mustn’t do things like that. I don’t know what would happen if you touched me—so you mustn’t do it.”

He stood up and backed away from her to the chair beside the desk. It was a swivel, and as he sat down in it, facing her at the window, it shifted two inches to the left. Out of the tail of her eye she saw, and turned her head, and smiled at him in the desk chair, but said nothing more.

For a while she leaned on the sunny window sill, gazing down into the garden in their silent companionship. The kitten crept into her lap and went to sleep.

At last she stirred, with a long sigh.

“We’ll have to go, Muffin,” she said. “It’s getting on for lunch time. And if we don’t stay up here too long or too often, perhaps Aunt Effie won’t mind so much.”

She gathered up the sleepy kitten and the bundle of faded flowers for the dustbin. At the door she looked back into the smiling, sun-drenched room, and waved a gay au revoir towards the desk.

The days went by uneventfully, and she kept house for him. No dust collected on the polished surfaces of his mahogany, and the cushions were always shaken up and set by the ears at the proper housemaid’s angle. He found that if he persistently left the same book off the shelf she would read it. Or sometimes she had already read it, and would tell Muffin what she thought of it. Most of her conversation with Muffin included Hilary as well.