At this moment, Roger Armstrong, also, woke from out a dream.
In this strange, second life of ours, that replaces the life of day, do we not meet interiorly? Do not thoughts and knowledges cross, from spirit to spirit, over the abyss, that lip, and eye, and ear, in waking moments, neither send nor receive? That even mind itself is scarcely conscious of? Is not the great deep of being, wherein we rest, electric with a sympathetic life—and do not warnings and promises and cheer pulse in upon us, mysteriously, in these passive hours of the flesh, when soul only is awake and keen?
Do not two thoughts, two consciousnesses, call and answer to each other, mutely, in twin dreams of night?
Roger Armstrong came in, late, that evening, from a visit to a distant sick parishioner. Then he sat, writing, for an hour or two longer.
By and by, he threw down his pen—pushed back his armchair before his window—stretched his feet, wearily, into the deep, old-fashioned window seat—leaned his head back, and let the cool breeze stir his hair.
So it soothed him into sleep.
He dreamed of Faith. He dreamed he saw her stand, afar off, in some solitary place, and beckon, as it were, visibly, from a wide, invisible distance. He dreamed he struggled to obey her summons. He battled with the strange inertia of sleep. He strove—he gasped—he broke the spell and hastened on. He plunged—he climbed—he stood in a great din that bewildered and threatened; there was a lurid light that glowed intense about him as he went; in the midst of all—beyond—she beckoned still.
"Faith! Faith! What danger is about you, child?"
These words broke forth from him aloud, as he started to his feet, and stretched his hands, impulsively, out before him, toward the open window.