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