even then it all seemed too utterly strange and wonderful to be true; and a subtle confirmation of the child's presence that followed immediately only added at first to his increasing amazement. For both Smoke and Mrs. Tompkyns, he became aware, had jumped up softly upon the foot of the bed, and were sitting there, purring loudly with pleasure, close beneath the fleck of light. And their action made him seek the further confirmation of his own senses. He leaned forwards, hesitating in his bewilderment between the desire to find the matches and the desire to touch the speaker with his hands. But even in that darkness his intention was divined instantly. The light slid away like a wee torch carried on wings.
'No, Uncle Paul,' whispered the voice farther off, 'not the matches. Light makes it more difficult for me.' He sank back against the pillows, frightened at the reality of it all. The old familiar name, too, 'Uncle Paul,' was almost more than he could bear.
'Nixie!' he stammered, and then found it impossible to finish the sentence.
Then she laughed. He heard her silvery laughter in the room, exactly as he had heard it a hundred times before, spontaneous, mischievous, and absolutely natural. She was amused at his perplexity, at his want of faith; at the absurd difficulty he found in believing. He lay quite still, breathing hard, wondering what would come next; still trying to persuade himself it was all a dream, yet growing gradually convinced in spite of himself that it was not.
'And don't come too near me,' he heard her voice across the room. 'Never try and touch me, I mean. Think of me at your centre. That's the real way to get near.'
Very slowly then, after that, he began to accept the Supreme Aventure. He talked. He asked questions, though never the obvious and detailed sort of questions it might have been expected he would ask. For it was now borne in upon him, as she said, that only her real part had come back, and that only his real part, therefore, was in touch with her. It was, so to speak, a colloquy of souls in which physical and material things had no interest. His very first question brought the truth of this home to him with singular directness. He asked her what the tiny light was that he saw moving to and fro like a little torch.
'But I didn't know there was a light,' she answered. 'Where I am it is all light! I see you perfectly. Only—you look so young, Uncle Paul! Just like a boy! About my own age, I mean.'
And it is impossible to describe the delight, the mystical rapture that came to him as he heard her. The words, 'Where I am it is all light,' brought with them a sudden sense of reality that was too convincing for him to doubt any longer. From her simple description he recognised a place that he knew. But, at the same time, he understood that it was no place in the ordinary sense of the word, but rather a state and a condition. He himself in his deepest dreams had been there too. That light had sometimes in brief moments of aspiration shone for him. And the curious sense of immense distance that came so curiously with her tiny voice came because there was really no distance at all. She was no longer conditioned by space or time. Those were limitations of life in the body, temporary scales of measurement adopted by the soul when dealing with temporary things. Whereas Nixie was free.
A sense of happiness deep as the sea, of peace, bliss, and perfect rest that could never know hurry or alarm, surged through him in a tide. He thought, with a thrill of anticipation, of the time when his own eyes would be opened, and he should see as clearly as she did. But instantly the rebuke came.
'Oh! You must not think about that,' she said with a laugh; 'you have a lot to do first, a lot more aventures to go through!'
As she spoke the light slid nearer again and settled upon the foot of the bed. His thoughts were evidently the same as spoken words to her. She knew all that passed in his mind, the very feelings of his heart as well. This was indeed companionship and intimacy. He remembered how she had told him all about it in the Crack weeks ago, before he realised who she was, and before he knew her face to face. And at the same moment he noticed another curious detail of her presence, namely, that the little torch—for so he now called it to himself—in passing before the mirror produced no reflection in the glass. Yet, if his eyes could perceive it, there ought to have been a refraction from the mirror as well—a reflection! Did he then only perceive it with his interior vision? Was his spiritual sight already partially opened?
'That's your 'terpretation of me—inside yourself,' he caught her swift whisper in reply, for again she heard his thought; and he almost laughed out aloud with pleasure to notice the long word decapitated as her habit always was on earth. 'In your thoughts I'm a sort of light, you see.'
The explanation was delightful. He understood perfectly. The thought of Nixie had always come to him, even in earthly life, in the terms of brightness. And his love marvelled to notice, too, that she still had the old piercing vision into the heart of things, and the characteristically graphic way of expressing her meaning.
The purring of the cats made itself audible. They were both 'kneading' the bed-clothes by his feet, as happy as though being stroked.
'No, they don't see,' she explained the moment the thought entered his mind; 'they only feel that I'm here. Lots of animals are like that. It's the way dogs know 'sti'ctively if a person's good or bad.'
Oh, how the animals after this would knit him to her presence! No wonder he had already found comfort with them that no human being could give. . . . The thought of his sister flashed next into his brain—the difficulty of helping her
'I tried to get at her before I came here to you,' he heard, 'but her room was all dark. It was like trying to get inside a cloud. She's cold and shadowy—and ever such a long way off. It's diff'cult to explain.' 'I think I understand,' he whispered.
'You can get closer than I can.'
'I'll try.'
'Of course. You must.'
It was Nixie's happiness that seemed so wonderful and splendid to him. Her voice almost sang; and laughter slipped in between the shortest sentences even. Brightness, music, and pure joy were about her like an atmosphere. He was breathing a rarefied air, cool, scented, and exhilarating. He had already known it when playing with the children and enjoying their very-wonderful-indeed aventures; only now it was raised to a still higher power. In its very essence he knew it.
'Toby and Jonah are with me the moment they sleep,' she continued, ever following his least thought. 'The instant their bodies fold up they shoot across here to me. Toby comes easiest. She's a girl, you see. And Daddy's here too '
'Dick? 'he cried, memory and affection surging through him with a sudden passion.
'Of course. You've thought about him so much. He says you've always been close to each other '
The voice broke off suddenly, and the torch of light moved to and fro as though agitated. Paul heard no sound, and saw no sign, but again, into the clear and silent spaces of his soul, now opened so marvellously, so blessedly to receive, there swam the consciousness of another Presence. There was a long pause, while memory annihilated all the intervening years at a single stroke. . . .
His mind was growing slightly confused with it all. His mortal intelligence wearied and faltered a little with the effort to understand how time and; distance could be thus destroyed. He was not yet free as these others were free.
'How is it, then, that you can stay?' he asked presently, when the light held steady again. By 'you' he meant 'both of you.' Yet he did not say it. This was what seemed so wonderful in their perfect communion; words really were not necessary. Afterwards, indeed, he sometimes wondered whether he actually spoke at all.
'I was going on—at first,' came the soft answer, 'when I heard something calling me, and found I couldn't.
