The Menace

Those attempts had failed. But now the aspect of affairs was changed.
The ghost of Lord Clarenceux had more power over me now--I felt that
acutely; and I explained it by the fact that I was in the near
neighborhood of Rosa. It was only when she was near that the jealous
hate of this spectre exercised its full efficacy.

In such wise did I reason the matter out to myself. But reasoning was
quite unnecessary. I knew by a sure instinct. All the dark thoughts
of the ghost had passed into my brain, and if they had been
transcribed in words of fire and burnt upon my retina, I could not
have been more certain of their exact import.

As I sat in my room at the hotel that night I speculated morosely upon
my plight and upon the future. Had a man ever been so situated before?
Well, probably so. We go about in a world where secret influences are
continually at work for us or against us, and we do not suspect their
existence, because we have no imagination. For it needs imagination to
perceive the truth--that is why the greatest poets are always the
greatest teachers.

As for you who are disposed to smile at the idea of a live man crushed
(figuratively) under the heel of a ghost, I beg you to look back upon
your own experience, and count up the happenings which have struck you
as mysterious. You will be astonished at their number. But nothing is
so mysterious that it is incapable of explanation, did we but know
enough. I, by a singular mischance, was put in the way of the nameless
knowledge which explains all. At any rate, I was made acquainted with
some trifle of it. I had strayed on the seashore of the unknown, and
picked up a pebble. I had a glimpse of that other world which
permeates and exists side by side with and permeates our own.