‘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.