Bearing an Hourglass Read Online Free PDF Page A

enter this apartment.”
    “You misunderstood. I can’t enter the room in which my wife stays, and she can’t directly perceive me regardless of where we are. But I can enter my own residence when she’s absent. I do it all the time.”
    “She’s absent? I thought she was in her bedroom.”
    “She is. She’s absent from this room,” Gawain clarified. “If she entered it, I’d have to vanish. I’d just step through the wall until she was gone.”
    Norton thought of something else. “I understood it was death to see a ghost. That’s why people don’t like it! Does this mean I am going to die?”
    Gawain laughed. “Yes, in a manner of thinking. You will die—in due course. Maybe fifty years hence. Every living person will. But seeing me won’t hasten your demise one whit, unless you should happen to die of fright.” He put his forefingers in the corners of his mouth and pulled his lips open in a grotesque face. Because he was insubstantial, he was able to stretch his mouth entirely beyond the borders of his face. “I’m not that kind of ghost. You’rethinking of Molly Malone of Kilvarough. She’s a nice and lovely ghost indeed; if I weren’t already married—” He left it unfinished.
    “Well, to answer your question,” Norton said shortly, “I did not have any intimate relation with Orlene. She’s not that kind of woman, any more than you’re that kind of ghost. And I can’t guarantee that I
will
have that kind of relation, or when.”
    “Now look, sport,” Gawain said indignantly. “You’re here accepting the hospitality of my estate. You owe it to me to deliver!”
    “To cuckold you?” Norton demanded, again expressing his inner irresolution. “To seduce your pristine, faithful wife?”
    “It’s not like that, and you know it. You’re here to perform a service.”
    “I thought I was here to do you a favor.”
    “Same thing. Once you do it, you can leave. Except I still have to teach you how to slay dragons.”
    “Well, Orlene is no dragon! The fact is, she is really a nice person, not a gold digger at all. If she decides not to—to want the favor, I’m not going to force it on her.”
    “What do you think
she’s
here for?” Gawain demanded. “She’s a guest of my estate too!”
    “She’s your
wife
!” Norton shouted. “She has a perfect right to be here!”
    “Not if she doesn’t produce! Listen, Norton, I’m locked in this state until I have a proper heir. She owes it to me to generate him promptly.”
    “Well, then, why didn’t you marry some slut who spreads her legs for any man who looks at her? Why inflict this on a nice girl?”
    “I
told
you,” the ghost responded hotly. “There are standards to maintain. Our family is of noble lineage.”
    “Well, I have standards to maintain, too—and so does she.”
    “Anyway, I didn’t select her; my family did. They—”
    The ghost vanished in mid-sentence. Norton looked about, startled—and saw Orlene at the doorway.
    “Are you all right, Norton?” she asked worriedly. “I heard you shouting—”
    And she couldn’t hear the ghost! He’d have to watch that. What had she heard? He felt a slow flush nudging up his neck and cheeks as he considered that. “I—I don’t suppose you would believe I was talking to the ghost?”
    “I really wish you wouldn’t—”
    “Call it a bad dream, then. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
    She looked doubtful. “You’re such a good man. Do you really suffer from—”
    Norton laughed, somewhat too heartily. “How can you know I’m a good man? I’m an ordinary man, perhaps less than ordinary, since I have never had much success in life. Not like you.”
    “Oh, no! I am nothing!” she protested. “You glow!”
    Norton studied her. She was in a pinkish-white peignoir, and her honey-golden hair hung loose about her shoulders. There was something enormously appealing about her, and it was not mere beauty or sensuality. But he resisted that appeal, choosing instead to