The big bell said ‘Doom ‘eight times.
‘Doom’ the big bell seemed to say a ninth time, sweet and far. The Dreamer started, awoke, and knew his surroundings again. The ninth sound was the deep call of an engine whistle, rolled on river and rock and forest, and mellowed on many miles of smoky air. He sat with his chin on his hands, his heart yet tingling.
‘Was that how it happened, Paul?
In his soul the question sounded, not in his ear. He answered the voice with a sighing ‘Yes,’ and then looked up and wondered.
‘Dad,’ he said aloud, ‘am I making confession? Do you follow these memories? Have I only to glass things in my mind for you to see them?’
He waited in a sudden awe. He would make no answer of his own; he would lend the aid of no obscure mechanism of the brain to any tricking of himself. No answer came, and he sat disheartened, staring at the one visible hill which peered like a shadow from the other shadows in the midst of which he dwelt.
A minute later he was ten years forward. He was seated in the smoking-room of the Victoria Hotel at Euston, and he and Ralston were alone. Ralston was talking.
‘The soul,’ he said, ‘makes experiments. It writes its notes on the body, and, having learned its own lesson, it throws the paper away. We lose to learn value. We shall know better next time. We have to sample our cargo, and we waste most of it, but we shall be refound for the next voayge. Bless God for an open-air penitence, but let us have no foul air of the cloister to turn repentance sour. So big a thing as the soul can afford to forgive so small a thing as the body.’
‘After divorce, perhaps,’ said Paul; and fell to his dream again.