I sat up in bed and prayed God passionately to be merciful, to deal with me lovingly: to send me Robbie, whether from this world or the next.
Imperceptibly, in the luminous silence, the spiritual sluggishness of the latter days disappeared; physical being fell from me like a cloak; my mind became clear and radiant, my heart breathless with hope. Faith possessed me, and as I prayed, I waited.
There was a soft tread in the room: I knew whose, should know it at the end of Eternity. There was no terror in me this time, no dreadful thought that it might be Uncle Simeon. Nor was there any soul's illusion, as in the hundred other times the need of my heart and the power of my imagination had created his presence. For the little white nightgowned figure standing at the door was there, in plain reality, as he had been at the Torribridge door eleven years before.
And now, in this moment when the actual physical presence I had for ever prayed and longed for was achieved, the whole structure of my love collapsed. A disappointment too sudden, too infinite to bear, filled my heart, from which the life seemed to be ebbing away. I understood the difference between the child I had loved on the Torribridge night, and the vision I had built with my love. One was dead and returned to earth for a moment, the other had never lived except in my heart. I was a woman, this was a little boy.
At the supernatural fact of his resurrection for this night I never stopped to marvel: only at my own folly in not having paused to think that the physical shape of Robbie returning to earth must needs be the physical shape in which he had left it. I was a woman, this was a little boy.
The vision had been real, but it was not Robbie. My heart still loved the darling of its dreams, but my darling was not Robbie.
"I cannot come nearer, Mary," he said softly, and at the sound of his remembered voice my pulse beat faster, and life flowed back into my heart, and my child's love in its first simplicity, without the added passion of the years, came back to me again. "I have returned for a moment only. Do not grieve because God did not let me grow to be a man on earth below. I loved you that happy once, and I love you still. Do not think, dear, that because I had gone to Heaven, all the times you have called for me since, and when I have come to you, have not been true. Each time you have called I have answered you in Heaven. Each time my spirit has been with you. But God never meant me for this world: He never meant me to be His this-world's love for you. Your happiness is coming."
"When, Robbie? How?"
"Very soon. You will see. You will be very happy."
"Come nearer, and kiss me Good-bye."