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.... Straightway I was 'ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,

'Guess now who holds thee?'—' Death,' I said. But there

The silver answer rang—'Not Death, but Love.'

E. B. B.

.... IT was only when the sky grew dark and the shadow of clouds fell over that sunny landscape that he realised he was still standing half dressed beside a dying fire, and that through the open window behind him the cold night air brought discomfort that made him shiver. He drew the curtains, lit a candle, spoke a soft word or two to the curled-up forms of Mrs. Tompkyns and Smoke, who were far too busy in their own Crack-land to trouble about replying, and so finally got into bed.

He felt happier, strangely comforted. The wings of memory and phantasy, withdrawing softly, left a soothed feeling in his heart. In that region of creative imagination known as the 'Crack' he always found peace and at least a measure of joy. Until sleep should come to captain his forces, he deliberately turned the current of his thoughts to the work he was about to take up in London. Nixie, Joan, Dick—all helped him. His will erected an iron barrier against the insidious attacks of sadness—the disease which strikes at the roots of effort. He would dream his dreams, but also, he would do his work. . . .

The shadows thickened about the house, crowding from the heart of winter. The fire died down. The room lay still. It was between one and two o'clock in the morning, when silence in the country is a real silence, and the darkness weighs. Chasing Smoke and Mrs. Tompkyns down the winding corridors of dream—Paul slept.

A faint sound in the room a little later made him stir in his sleep and smile. His lips moved, as though in that land of dreams where he wandered some one spoke to him and he answered. Then the sound was repeated, and he woke with a start, sat up in bed, and stared hard into the darkness.

The fire was quite out; nothing was visible but the dim frame of the window on his right where he had forgotten to draw the curtains. A glimmer of light revealed the sash. Thinking it must be the winter dawn, he was about to lie down again and resume his slumbers, when the sound that had first wakened him again made itself audible.

A slight shiver ran down his spine, for the sound seemed to bring over some of the wonder of his dreams into that dark and empty room. Then, with a tiny revelation of certainty, the knowledge came that he was wide awake, and that the sound was close in front of him. Moreover, he knew at once that it was neither Smoke nor Mrs. Tompkyns. It was a sound, deliberately produced, with conscious intelligence behind it. And it shot through him with the sweetness of music. It was like a breath of wind that rustled through a swinging branch—of a birch tree; as though such a branch waved to and fro softly above his head.

His first idea was that some one was in the room, and had taken down the spray of withered leaves from the wall; and he strained his eyes in the direction of the mantelpiece, trying to pierce the darkness. In vain, of course. All he could distinguish was that something moved gently to and fro like a spot of light—almost like a fire-fly, yet white—about the room.

From some deep region of sleep where he had just been, the atmosphere of dream was still, perhaps, about him. Yet this was no dream. There was somebody in the room with him, somebody alive, somebody who wished to claim his attention—who had already spoken to him before he woke. He knew it unmistakably; he even remembered what had been said to him while yet asleep! 'How can you go on sleeping when I am here, trying to get at you?' It was just as if the words still trembled on the air. Confusedly, scarcely aware what he did, yet already thrilling with happiness, his lips formed an answer:

'Who are you? What is it you want?'

There was a pause of intense silence, during which his heart hammered in his temples. Then a very faint whisper gathered through the darkness:

'I promised. . . .'

The point of light wavered a little in the air, then came low and seemed to settle on the end of the bed. Into the clear and silent spaces of his lonely soul there swam with it the presence of some one who had never died, and who could never die.

'Is that you?' The name seemed incredible, for this was no Aventure through the Crack, yet he uttered it after an imperceptible moment of hesitation 'Nixie?'

Even then he could not believe an answer would be forthcoming. The light, however, moved slightly, and again came the faint tones of a voice, a singing voice:

'Of course it is!' There was a curious suggestion of huge distance about it, as though it travelled like an echo across vast spaces. 'I'm here, close beside you; closer than ever before.'

He heard the words with what can only be described as a spiritual sensation—the peace and gratitude that follow the passion of strong prayer, of prayer that believes it will be heard and answered. 'You know now—don't you?' continued the tiny singing voice, 'because I've told you.'

'Yes,' he answered, also very low, 'I know now.' For at first he could think of nothing else to say. A huge excitement moved in him. Those invisible links of pure aspiration by which the soul knits herself inwardly to God seemed suddenly tightened in the depths of his being. He understood that this was a true thing, and possible.

'You've come back—like the trees in the spring,' he whispered stammeringly, after another pause, gazing as steadily as he could at the point of clear light so close in front of him.

'The real part of me,' she explained; 'the real part of me has come back.'

'The real part,' he echoed in his bewilderment. He began to understand.

But 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. I had something to do here.'

'What?' he ventured under his breath.

'You!' She laughed in his face, so to speak. 'You, of course. Part of you is in me, so I couldn't go on without you. But when you are ready, and have done your work, we'll go on together. Daddy is waiting, too. Oh, it's simply splendid—a very-splendid-indeed aventure, you see! 'Again she laughed through that darkened room till it seemed filled with white light, and the light flooded his very soul as he heard her.

'You will wait, Nixie? 'he asked.

'I must wait. Both of us must wait. We are all together, you see.' And, after another long pause, he asked another question:

'This work, then, that keeps me here?'

'Your London boys, of course. There's no one in the whole world who can do it so well. You've been picked out for it; that's what really brought you home from America!' And she burst out into such a peal of laughter that Paul laughed with her. He simply couldn't help himself. He felt like singing at the same time. It was all so happy and reasonable and perfect.

'You've got the money and the time and the 'thusiasm,' she went on; 'and over here there are thousands and millions of children all watching you and clapping their hands and dancing for joy. I've told them all the Aventures you wrote, but they think this is the best of all—the London-Boys-Aventure'!'

He felt his heart swell within him. It seemed that the child's hair was again about his eyes, her slender arms clasping his neck, and her blue eyes peering into his as when she begged him of old in the nursery or schoolroom for an aventure, a story.

'So you'll never give it up, will you, Uncle Paul?' she sang, in that tiny soft voice through the darkness.

'Never,' he said.

'Promise? '

'Promise,' he replied. The thought of those 'thousands and millions' of children watching his work from the other side of death was one that would come back to strengthen him in the future hours of discouragement that he was sure to know.

And much more she told him besides. They talked, it seemed, for ever—yet said so little. Into mere moments—such was the swift and concentrated nature of their intimacy—they compressed hours of earthly conversation; for his thoughts were heard and answered as soon as born within him, and a whole train of ideas that the lips ordinarily stammer over in difficult detail crowded easily into a single expression—a thought, a desire, a question half uttered, and then a reply that comprehended all. There was no labour or weariness, no sense of effort.

Moreover, when at length he heard her faint whisper, 'Now I must go,' it conveyed no sense of departure or loss. She did not leave him. It was more as though he closed a much-loved book and replaced it in his pocket. The pictures evoked do not leave the mind because the cover is closed; they remain, on the contrary, to be absorbed by the heart Nixie's silvery presence was in him; he would always feel her now, even when his thoughts seemed busy with outer activities.

The little torch flickered and was gone; but as Paul gazed into the darkness of the room he knew that the light had merely slipped down deep into himself to burn as an unfailing beacon at the centre of his soul. And then it was that he realised other curious details for the first time. Some of the more ordinary faculties of his mind, it seemed, had been in suspension during the amazing experience, while others had been exalted as in trance. For it now came to him that he had actually seen her—with a clearness that he had never known before. That torch lit up her little form as a lantern lights up a person holding it in darkness. Just as he had felt all the sweet and essential points of her personality, so also he had been vividly aware of her figure in the terms of sight—eyes, hair, sunburned little hands, and twinkling feet. Her very breath and perfume even!

If the working of his ordinary senses had been in abeyance so that he hardly knew the hunger for common sight and touch, he now realised that it was because they had been replaced by these higher senses with their keener, closer satisfaction. And this intimate knowledge of her was as superior to the ordinary methods as flying is to crawling—or, better still, as a draught of water in the throat is to dipping the fingers in the cup.

For who, indeed, shall define the standard of reality? And who, when the senses are such sorry reporters, shall declare with authority that one thing is false and could not happen, and another is true and actually did happen? Experiences of the transcendental order are, perhaps, beyond the power of precise words to describe, for they are not common enough to have become incorporated into the language of a race. And words are clumsy and inadequate symbols at best. The deepest thoughts, as the deepest experiences, ever evade them. It is difficult to convey the sense of fierce reality the presence of Nixie brought to him. It flooded and covered him; spread through and over him like light; entered into his essential being to cherish and to feed, just as the body assimilates earthly nourishment. He absorbed her. She nourished while she blessed him.

She had told him the secret: to think centrally. He now began to understand how much nearer he could be to others by thinking strongly of them than by walking at their side. Physical touch is distant compared to the subtle intimacy of the desiring mind. The mystical conception of union with God came home to him as something practically possible.

Yet when he got up a few minutes later to write down the conversation as he remembered it, the mere lighting of the candle, the noise of the match, the dipping of his pen in the ink—all contrived somehow to bring him down to a lower order of things that dimmed most strangely the memory of what had just passed. Most of what he had heard escaped him. He could not frame it into words. All he could recapture is what has been here set down so briefly and baldly.

It then seemed to him—the thought laboured to and fro in his mind as he got back into bed and sleep came over him—that it was only the Higher Self in him that had been in communication with the child. The eternal part of him had talked with the eternal part of her. In the body, however, this was commonly submerged. Her presence had temporarily evoked it. It now had returned to its Throne at the core of his being.

All that he remembered of the colloquy was the little portion that, as it were, had filtered through into his normal self. The rest, the main part, however, was not lost. He had absorbed it. If he could not recall the actual words and language, he understood—it was his last thought before sleep caught him—that its results would remain for ever.

And those who have known similar experiences will understand without more words. The rest will never understand. Perhaps, after all, the best and purest form of memory is—results.