"Can you see him? Can you see his face?"
"Yes," replied the voice, without hesitation. "He is very pale. His hair is soft, brown, and silky, with a few grey streaks in it. His eyes are gentle and tender, and his beard is like his hair, soft and like silk. He is as you last saw him alive, when you kissed him by the fireplace in the room that is yellow, just before he died. He loves you, as he did then."
Such evidence of unnatural knowledge might have convinced a more sceptical mind than Matilde's of the fact that the somnambulist could at least read her thoughts and memories from her mind as from a book. It was impossible that any one but herself could know how, and in what room, she had kissed him for the last time, a few minutes before his end. Again the cold shiver ran under her hair, and she could not speak again for a few moments.
"Does he know what I am going to do to-day?" she asked at last, in a very low voice.
"I will ask him."
The silence which followed was the longest of all that there had been.
"I cannot see him any more," said the voice, speaking more faintly. "He is gone. He will communicate with you again. I cannot find him. Giuditta is tired—she will—" The last words were hardly audible, and the voice died away altogether.
In the dark, Matilde heard something like a yawn, as of a person waking from sleep. Then Giuditta's croaking voice spoke to her.
"I am tired," she said. "The spirits have kept me a long time. Did you hear anything that you wished to hear?"
"Yes. I heard much."