“What do you call the last?” she asked, smiling still.
At this he could smile back at her. “You’ll see—when it comes.”
She thought of that. “This is better perhaps; but as we were—it was good.”
He put her the question. “Did it never happen that he spoke of me?”
Considering more intently she made no answer, and he then knew he should have been adequately answered by her asking how often he himself had spoken of their terrible friend. Suddenly a brighter light broke in her face and an excited idea sprang to her lips in the appeal: “You have forgiven him?”
“How, if I hadn’t, could I linger here?”
She visibly winced at the deep but unintended irony of this; but even while she did so she panted quickly: “Then in the lights on your altar—?”
“There’s never a light for Acton Hague!”
She stared with a dreadful fall, “But if he’s one of your Dead?”
“He’s one of the world’s, if you like—he’s one of yours. But he’s not one of mine. Mine are only the Dead who died possessed of me. They’re mine in death because they were mine in life.”