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"We sat there in silence. Then Big Ramona was boiling milk for our caf¨¦ au lait and it smelled good. I remember that, the smell of that hot milk.

"I just realized that Lolly was all dressed up because she was going out with her boyfriend, who was always trying to marry her and lure her away but never succeeded. She looked like a Hindu beauty, Lolly. And Jasmine, Jasmine in her plain shirtwaist dress of red silk was smoking in the kitchen, which was rare.

"The hot milk went into the coffee cups. I looked down into the steam.

" 'Everybody believes me,' I said. 'You all believe me. ¡¯

"Pops said to Jasmine, 'Tell him. ¡¯

" 'Tell me what?' I asked.

"Jasmine drew on her cigarette and crushed it out in her plate. Then she lit another one, just like that. 'It was Goblin,' she said, 'who came in here and pointed and carried on about the curtains burning. It was Goblin, in a flash' -- she snapped her fingers -- 'as big as life. ¡¯

" 'Knocked the plate out of her hand,' said Lolly.

"Jasmine nodded. 'Knocked a plate off the drainboard there, too. ¡¯

"I was speechless. I was overwhelmed. All my life these very people had insisted Goblin didn't exist, or I shouldn't be talking to Goblin, or Goblin was my subconscious, or Goblin was just an imaginary playmate, and now they were saying these things. I had no answer. I felt amazement more than anything else.

" 'How could that creature knock that plate off the drainboard?' asked Pops.

" 'I'm telling you, it happened,' said Jasmine. 'I was rinsing the dishes in the sink, and that plate went crash, and then, when I turned, there he was, and he was pointing to the door, and he knocked the plate out of my hand. "

"Everybody went quiet.

" 'And this is why you believe me?' I asked. 'Because you saw Goblin with your own eyes?¡¯

" 'I'm not saying I believe one word of what you said,' Jasmine fired back. 'I'm just saying I saw Goblin. That's all I have to say. ¡¯

" 'You know who that Rebecca was, don't you?' I asked, glancing around at everyone. Nobody said a word.

" 'I'm going to have the priest out here,' said Pops in the same lifeless fashion in which he'd said everything else. 'I'm going to get Fr. Mayfair here. This is just too many ghosts, and I don't care if one of them was Virginia Lee. ¡¯

" 'And you, you idiot boy,' said Big Ramona, 'stop glorying in the fact that everybody believes you and get it straight in your head that you nearly burned down this house. ¡¯

" 'That's the damned truth,' said Jasmine. 'I'm not saying I don't believe you saw this creature, this thing, this woman, but Mamma's right, you damned near burnt down Blackwood Manor. You set the damned place on fire. ¡¯

" 'Look, I know that,' I said defensively. I got real defensive. 'But who was she? Why'd she want to burn down this house? Did she die out there on the island? That has to be it. ¡¯

"Pops raised his hand for silence. 'Doesn't matter who she was. If she did die out there, there's nothing left of her. And you do what I tell you about making the Sign of the Cross. ¡¯

" 'Don't you ever be caught up by her again,' said Lolly.

"And on and on it went for a half hour, them castigating me and excoriating me and everything else in the book.

"When I left the kitchen, I was in a sort of daze. Memories of being with her were coming back to me and I didn't dare tell the Kitchen Committee. I just wanted out.

"I went into the parlor, maybe to convince myself that it was the parlor I knew and not that strange apparition, and I found myself looking at the portrait of Manfred Blackwood. So distinguished. So much authority in his bulldog face. It is amazing, the varieties of beauty. His huge mournful eyes, his flattened nose, his jutting chin and turned-down mouth all seemed harmonious and silently grand. I found myself talking to him, murmuring to him that he knew who that Rebecca Stanford was, and I would find out.

" 'Why didn't you come to try to stop her?' I asked him, watching the play of light on the portrait. 'Why did it have to be Virginia Lee?¡¯

"I went into the dining room and looked up at the portrait of Virginia Lee. I had seen her, vital, in motion, I had heard her voice, I had seen her small blue eyes blazing with anger and outrage. The dizziness came again. I welcomed it, straining to catch the mumbled voices that were maddeningly beyond my hearing: Mean to my children. Crying, brokenhearted. I'm afraid I'll die and someone will be mean to my children. The chorus of the Rosary came from the living room. She was crying. So mean to my poor children.

" 'Virginia Lee,' I said. 'I didn't mean to do it. ' But only the silence came back at me, and her portrait was just a portrait, and there were no more prayers. I was struggling to remember things that hadn't happened. I was sleepy all over. I had to lie down.

"When I reached my room I was utterly exhausted. I cleaned up the bedspread as best I could with a wet washcloth, and then I flopped down and went into a strange half sleep. I felt myself falling out of consciousness.

"Rebecca was talking to me. The room was her room again, and she explained again that things did not happen in a straight line. Everything was happening all the time. She was always here. I grow no older. I never escape. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but some arbitrary darkness crept in, and I turned over and fell into a deep sweet state somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, in which my body enjoyed its exhaustion and knew it was exhausted from having spent itself sexually, and she and her strange talk were all gone.