42 A PHANTASM IN THE WIND 



The wind does not blow through me, although it 

 assaults me violently: it bombards me with millions 

 of atoms, and presses hard against me, not evenly, 

 but in waves of varying strength, in blows, as it were, 

 that can shake me even as they shake and make 

 tremble the mighty trees and towers and bridges and 

 great buildings of stones and wood and metal. My 

 whole body, lifted above the ground on a horse, is 

 vibrating violently, and although this body vibration 

 does not translate itself into sound, it reaches the 

 brain, even as sound vibrations do, and sets the 

 mental machinery going. 



There was more to say on this fascinating question, 

 but as it must be all purely conjecture, I will leave 

 it here to discuss another mystery which connects 

 itself in my mind with the wind. 



One autumn evening some years ago I was walking 

 home in a London street, walking briskly in the face 

 of a strong south-west wind, the one I love best of 

 all winds in this hemisphere, thinking of nothing 

 except that I was thirsty for my tea and that 

 the wind was very delightful, when something 

 extraordinary occurred, something never hitherto 

 experienced. This was the appearance of a face — 

 the face of a girl well known and very dear to me, 

 who lived at that time at home with her people at 

 a distance of eighty miles from where I was. It was 

 the face only, the vivid image of the face, so vividly 

 seen that it could not have appeared a more real 

 human face if the girl had actually come before me. 

 But, as I said, only the face, and it appeared to be 



