"It's just this; that I owe everything in the world to him. I owe my life to him; I owe," his voice lowered, "I owe my soul to him. You ought to have heard him talk. But it was n't talking, it wasn't preaching. I don't know what it was, unless—unless it was praying. Yet it was n't like that either. He got inside me and made me talk to myself. It was the first time words ever meant anything to me—that they ever got a hold on me. You 've talked, little sister, Lord knows how often, and how deep from the heart, but somehow, dear, nothing of it sank in below the brain. I understood as in a sort of dream. Sometimes I even remembered it for a little, but that was all.
"But he was different, Elaine! If I forgot every word he spoke, the meaning of it would still be left. I 'd still feel his hand upon my shoulder, the hand that sank through my shoulder and got a grip on something inside me. I 'd still feel his eyes burning into mine. I 'd still see that street out the window and know what it meant. I 'd even see the little old lady picking her way to the other side,—see the blind beggar on the corner and the Others. Oh, the Others, Elaine!"
He had risen from beside her and pressed towards the window as though once again he wished to taste the air that came down to him from the star-country to sweeten the decaying soul of him.
"What was it, Elaine?" he demanded.
"You heard," she answered, "because every fibre of him is true. Tell me more."
"He showed me the sun on the windows!" he ran on eagerly. "He showed me the people passing on the streets! He showed me what I—even I—had to do among them. Did you know that we are n't just ourselves—that we 're a part of a thousand other lives? Did you know that?"
"It takes a seer really to know that," she answered, "but it's true."
"That's it," he broke in. "He knows! He doesn't guess, he doesn't reason, he knows!"
She was leaning forward, her head a little back, her eyes half-closed. He saw the veins in her neck—the light purple penciling of them—as they throbbed. He was held a moment by the sight. Then he laughed gently.
"Little sister," he said, "you know him even better than I."