And he slowly drew with the point of his stick an imaginary line from the five‑franc piece to the left of her, at right angles to where she stood. When the point of the stick was about two feet from the coin, she said:
"Tiens, tiens, I no longer see the piece!"
When the point of the stick had got a foot farther on, she said, "Now I can see the piece again quite plain."
Then he tried the same experiment on her left eye, rightwards, with the same result. Then he experimented with equal success on her father and mother, and found that every eye at No. 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches had exactly the same blind spot as his own.
Then off he went to Antwerp to see his friends with a light heart—the first light heart he had known for many months; but when he got there he was so preoccupied with what had happened that he did not care to see anybody.
He walked about the ramparts and along the Scheldt, and read and re‑read that extraordinary letter.
Who and what could Martia be?
The reminiscence of some antenatal incarnation of his own soul? the soul of some ancestor or ancestress— of his mother, perhaps? or, perhaps, some occult portion of himself—of his own brain in unconscious cerebration during sleep?
As a child and a small boy, and even as a very young man, he had often dreamt at night of a strange, dim land by the sea, a land unlike any land he had ever beheld with the waking eye, where beautiful aquatic people, mermen and mermaids and charming little mer‑children (of which he was one) lived an amphibious life by day, diving and sporting in the waves.
Splendid caverns, decorated with precious stones, and hung with soft moss, and shining with a strange light; heavenly music, sweet, affectionate caresses—and then total darkness; and yet one knew who and what and where everything and everybody was by some keener sense than that of sight.