BERN, Switzerland — So a journalist walks into this place to get a drink, halfway around the world from home, and he knows the woman at the bar. What are the chances of that?

The journalist is me, and the woman is not just any woman, but a silver ghost.

The ghost, perched upon the bar, is Eleanor Thornton, who has been dead for almost a century. But I don’t think it is too much to say she is immortal.

Miss Thornton, a secretary for the 2nd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu in England — and also his lover — was made forever young as the model for the famous sculptures The Whisper and The Spirit of Ecstasy. The original sculptures were created by Charles Robinson Sykes, and despite their larger-than-life stature, they were each only a a few inches tall.