It had been in the early morning, when all such things befall. For then the mind is not yet recaptured by life and no longer held by sleep. There is in it a pure expectancy, open to strange influences: influences from memory and the under-soul. It visualizes easily, and dream and fact are one.
In this state Catharine woke on a September morning and felt beside her a presence that held her breathless. The half-remembered images and thoughts of sleep pursued her—became what we call "real."
"Robert!" she said, aloud—very low.
And without voice, it seemed to her that some one replied. A dialogue began into which she threw her soul. Of her body, she was not conscious; and yet the little room, its white ceiling, its open windows, and the dancing shadows of the autumn leaves were all present to her. She poured out the sorrow, the anxiety—about Mary—that pressed so heavy on her heart, and the tender voice answered, now consoling, now rebuking.
"And we forbade him, because he followed not us … Forbid him not—forbid him not!"—seemed to go echoing through the quiet air.
The words sank deep into her sense—she heard herself sobbing—and the unearthly presence came nearer—though still always remote, intangible—with the same baffling distance between itself and her….
The psychology of it was plain. It was the upthrust into consciousness of the mingled ideas and passions on which her life was founded, piercing through the intellectualism of her dogmatic belief. But though she would have patiently accepted any scientific explanation, she believed in her heart that Robert had spoken to her, bidding her renounce her repugnance to Mary's friendship with Meynell—to Mary's love for Meynell.
She came down the morning after with a strange, dull sense of change and disaster. But the currents of her mind and will had set firmly in a fresh direction. It was almost mechanically—under a strong sense of guidance—that she had made her hesitating proposal to Mary to go with her to the Upcote meeting. Mary's look of utter astonishment had sent new waves of disturbance and compunction through the mother's mind.
* * * * *
But if these things could not be told—even to Mary—there were other revelations to make.