The Shell of Sense Olivia Howard Dunbar Public Domain Recital Free Downloadsection 9 of famous modern ghost stories this is a librivox recording all librivox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librivox.org recording by sarah jennings famous modern ghost stories compiled by dorothy scarborough section 9 the shell of sense by olivia howard dunbar it was intolerably unchanged the dim dark-toned room in an agony of recognition my glance ran from one to another of the comfortable familiar things that my earthly life had been passed among incredibly distant from it all as i essentially was i noted sharply that the very gaps that i myself had left in the bookshelves still stood unfilled that the delicate fingers of the ferns i had tended were still stretched futilely toward the light that the soft agreeable chuckle of my own little clock like some elderly woman with whom conversation has become automatic was undiminished unchanged or so it seemed at first but there were certain trivial differences that shortly smote me the windows were closed too tightly for i had always kept the house very cool although i had known that teresa preferred warm rooms and my work basket was in disorder it was preposterous that so small a thing should hurt me so then for this was my first experience of the shadow folded transition the odd alteration of my emotions bewildered me for at one moment the place seemed so humanly familiar so distinctly my own proper envelope that for love of it i could have laid my cheek against the wall well in the next i was miserably conscious of strange new shrillnesses how could they be endured and had i ever endured them those harsh influences that i now perceived at the window light and color so blinding that they obscured the form of the wind tumult so discordant that one could scarcely hear the roses open in the garden below but teresa did not seem to mind any of these things disorder it is true the dear child had never minded she was sitting all this time at my desk at my desk occupied i could only too easily surmise how in the light of my own habits of precision it was plain that some somber correspondence should have been attended to before but i believe that i did not really reproach theresa for i knew that her notes when she did write them were perhaps less perfunctory than mine she finished the last one as i watched her and added it to the heap of black bordered envelopes that lay on the desk poor girl i saw now that they had cost her tears yet living beside her day after day year after year i had never discovered what deep tenderness my sister possessed toward each other it had been our habit to display only a temperate affection and i remember having always thought it distinctly fortunate for theresa since she was denied my happiness that she could live so easily and pleasantly without emotions of the devastating sort and now for the first time i was really to behold her could it be teresa after all this tangle of subdued turbulences let no one suppose that it is an easy thing to bear the relentlessly lucid understanding that i then first exercised or that in its first enfranchisement the timid vision does not yearn for its old screens and mists suddenly as theresa sat there her head filled with its tender thoughts of me held in her gentle hands i felt alan's step on the carpeted stair outside theresa felt it too but how for it was not audible she gave a start swept the black envelopes out of sight and pretended to be writing in a little book then i forgot to watch her any longer in my absorption in alan's coming it was he of course that i was awaiting it was for him that i had made this first lonely frightened effort to return to recover it was not that i had supposed he would allow himself to recognize my presence for had long been sufficiently familiar with his hard and fast denials of the invisible he was so reasonable always so sane so blindfolded but i had hoped that because of his very rejection of the ether that now contained me i could perhaps all the more safely the more secretly watch him linger near him he was near now very near but why did teresa sitting there in the room that had never belonged to her appropriate for herself his coming it was so manifestly i who had drawn him i whom he had come to seek the door was ajar he knocked softly at it are you there teresa he called he expected to find her then there in my room i shrank back fearing almost to stay i shall have finished in a moment teresa told him and he sat down to wait for her no spirit still unreleased can understand the pain that i felt with alan sitting almost within my touch almost irresistibly the wish beset me to let him for an instant feel my nearness then i checked myself remembering oh absurd piteous human fears that my two unguarded closeness might alarm him it was not so remote a time that i myself had known them those blind uncouth timidities i came therefore somewhat nearer but i did not touch him i merely leaned toward him and with incredible softness whispered his name that much i could not have foreborn the spell of life was still too strong in me but it gave him no comfort no delight teresa he called in a voice dreadful with alarm and in that instant the last veil fell and desperately scarce believingly i beheld how it stood between them those two she turned to him that gentle look of hers forgive me came from him hoarsely but i suddenly had the most unaccountable sensation can there be too many windows open there is such a chill about there are no windows open teresa assured him i took care to shut out the chill you are not well alan perhaps not he embraced the suggestion and yet i feel no illness apart from this abominable sensation that persists persists theresa you must tell me do i fancy it or do you two feel something strange here oh there is something very strange here she half-sobbed there always will be good heavens child i didn't mean that he rose and stood looking about him i know of course that you have your beliefs and i respect them but you know equally well that i have nothing of the sort so don't let us conjure up anything inexplicable i stayed impalpably imponderably near him wretched and bereft though i was i could not have left him while he stood denying me what i mean he went on his low distinct voice is a special and almost ominous sense of cold upon my soul teresa he paused if i were superstitious if i were a woman i should probably imagine it to seem a presence he spoke the last word very faintly but teresa shrank from it nevertheless don't say that alan she cried out don't think of it i beg you i've tried so hard myself not to think it and you must help me you know it is only perturbed uneasy spirits that wander with her it is quite different she has always been so happy she must still be i listened stunned to teresa's sweet dogmatism from what blind distances came her confident misapprehensions how dense both for her and for alan was the separating vapor alan frowned don't take me literally teresa he explained and i who a moment before had almost touched him now held myself aloof and hurt him with a strange untried pity newborn in me i'm not speaking of what you call spirits it's something much more terrible he allowed his head to sink heavily on his chest if i did not positively know that i had never done her any harm i should suppose myself to be suffering from guilt from remorse teresa you know better than i perhaps was she content always did she believe in me believe in you when she knew you to be so good when you adored her she thought that she said it then what in heaven's name ails me unless it is all as you believe teresa and she knows now what she didn't know then poor dear and minds minds what what do you mean alan i who with my perhaps illegitimate advantage saw so clear knew that he had not meant to tell her i did him that justice even in my first jealousy if i had not tortured him so by clinging near him he would not have told her but the moment came and overflowed and he did tell her passionate tumultuous story that it was during all our life together alan's and mine he had spared me had kept me wrapped in the white cloak of an unblemished loyalty but it would have been kinder i now bitterly thought if like many husbands he had years ago found for the story he now poured forth some clandestine listener i should not have known but he was faithful and good and so he waited till i mute and chained was there to hear him so well did i know him as i thought so thoroughly had he once been mine that i saw it in his eyes heard it in his voice before the words came and yet when it came it lashed me with the whips of an unbearable humiliation for i his wife had not known how greatly he could love and that teresa soft little traitor should in her still way have cared to where was the iron in her i moaned with my stricken spirit where the steadfastness from the moment he bade her she turned her soft little petals up to him and my last delusion was spent it was intolerable and nonetheless so that in another moment she had prompted by some belated thought of me renounced him allen was hers yet she put him from her and it was my part to watch them both then in the anguish of it all i remembered awkward untutored spirit that i was that i now had the great recourse whatever human things were unbearable i had no need to bear i ceased therefore to make the effort that kept me with them the pitiless poignancy was dulled the sounds and the light ceased the lovers faded from me and again i was mercifully drawn into the dim infinite spacesthere followed a period whose lengths i cannot measure during which i was able to make no progress in the difficult dizzying experience of release earthbound my jealousy relentlessly kept me though my two dear ones had forsworn each other i could not trust them for theirs seemed to me an 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