Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/57

Rh of the will. The influence of the perfume of a woman’s hair in unexpectedly arousing a feeling of intimacy will appeal to the male reader as a good example of this upsurging interference with the placid flow of normal ideation.

Perhaps, also, this is the explanation of a strange and rather unpleasant ghost-story I once heard. I dare not vouch for the truth of it, but as it bears upon the subject we are considering, I give it here, not without misgiving, for what it is worth, For the sake of verisimilitude I shall relate it pretty much in the narrator’s own words :

“The evening he came back I was sitting in my room alone. T had just got back from the play, the subject of which had been, it so happened, the influence of people recently dead upon those left behind. I suppose that’s what turned my mind to my sorrow of the previous year when I lost him. It is my husband I am talking about.

“I was sitting gazing at the fire, and I expect you will say I had fallen asleep. Perhaps I had. It doesn't matter really.

“We had been happy enough together, he and I. Just an ordinary married couple, you might say. But now and then a terrible longing would come over me just to see him once more, … to hear him speak, … to touch him. … I know it is selfish, and maybe unwise, to give way to those feelings, … but never mind that! Well, on the night I am telling you about, there came to my recollection some of the silly cantrips those Spiritualist people used to carry on. Oh, yes, it is quite true : I had gone once or twice to see them, and had even taken part in their services—séances, I should say—in James’s lifetime, I mean, before he died. Indeed T went with him. … I never went after. … I