She heard her name called: "Mary! Mary!" in a startlingly familiar voice. She heard herself reply: "Ronald!" It was very dark. Where was she? Ah, by the stream. It seemed queerly natural that she should be by that stream. It was not so dark after all—only twilight. Twilight with dark woods coming down to the stream. Her name was called again: "Mary! Mary!" her lover's voice impatient. Again she heard herself reply: "Ronald! Where are you?" "Here, dear! On the other side! You must cross the stream."
Of course! She must cross the stream—that was quite natural—and there was a little footbridge, offering passage. She went over, not daring to look down. On the other side she waited. He was not yet visible. She wondered what suit he would be wearing, wondered why she wondered. He came towards her, his clothes curiously more conspicuous than his face. He was clad in his old tweed suit, and mysteriously it seemed odd to her. Yet what else should he be wearing? It was the suit he always wore when out for a walk. She glanced at her own clothes with a subtle sense of strangeness, yet it was her old summer frock she wore. This little puzzle about clothes played itself out in cosmic depths of her, receded or was solved, vanished. Her lover was standing at her side, enfolded her.
"Mary! I have been so anxious about you!"
She looked up to eyes that seemed like stars in the twilight.
"I, too, Ronald—I have been worrying about you." There was a sense of something terrible in the background, imminent, and yet she felt it had been with her for a long time. It ceased. "But everything's all right now—I have found you."
A little glimmering something in the depths of her asked why she said that, seemed to repeat doubtfully: "Found you——" in a long, eternally re-echoing voice. She felt eerie. It was as though her existence was a duplicate imperfectly combined, like the double vision, half running into each other, of badly adjusted binoculars.
"I am so glad you are safe, dear," she heard herself say.