And—spun to the merest spider-thread of sound by infinite distance, her unforgettable voice answered ... beyond doubt or question answered:
“I hear you.... Oh, where are you?”
LXXXVII
He could not doubt that she had heard and answered. There was no explanation possible. It had happened, that was all. You may rub shoulders, in the course of a morning’s walk down one of the big world’s crowded thoroughfares, with a hundred men and women who are genuinely convinced of the impossibility of such communication between the minds and souls of those who, separated by countries, or continents, or oceans, are not even aware of one another’s whereabouts. But the hundred-and-first will be initiate. She or he will have felt the tightening of the invisible spider-thread, experienced the thrill, known the familiar touch upon the brow or breast—heard the beloved voice speaking at the inner ear. And, like Dunoisse, having experienced, they will refrain from questioning. It has happened.... When the time comes, it will certainly happen again....
Not long after, during an attack of fever, Dunoisse dreamed that he awakened in the chill gray dawn of a February morning to see Ada Merling sitting by his bed. It seemed so natural to have her there, and so divinely sweet and comforting, that he lay for a long time gazing at her, dwelling on each dear, remembered trait and lovely feature, breathing her atmosphere, drinking her in. She wore in this his vision of her, not the gray nurse’s dress of Cavendish Street, but a plain black gown, though the frilled white muslin cap of his remembrance sat close and sober, as of old, upon her rich, brown, waving hair, and the cambric apron made a splash of white upon the blackness of the dress. The lines of the pure features were a little sharpened, the eyes larger, the sensitive, clearly-cut lips were closely folded. She looked sadder ... older.... Even as he realized this she smiled; and such a radiance of beauty kindled in her, and shone forth from her, that he cried out in rapture and awakened; and in his weakness shed tears on finding himself a prisoner and alone.
But the dream, following the answer on the ramparts, left a clear impression. She was living, and yet unwedded, and she had not forgotten him—not quite forgotten him! The conviction of this gave him new strength to live. Later on he received another intimation, not from the living world beyond the ramparts and the poplared marshes, but from the other World that is beyond the Veil.
It came to him one day at dusk with a crisping of the hair and a shuddering of the flesh that was not terror—rather wonder and awe, and solemn gladness. The day had been dark and rainy. His lamp had not been lighted, the scanty fire burned low in the rusty grate. Dunoisse sat thinking, leaning his elbows on the table where his silent servitor had set his meager supper. And suddenly the recollection of his mother as he had last seen her rose up in him. The whisper of her woolen draperies seemed to cross the rough brick floor, her thin light touch was between his eyebrows, tracing there the Sacred Sign. And almost without conscious volition her son rose up, placed a rush-seated chair opposite his own at the poorly-furnished table; filled a goblet with pure water, cut bread, laid it upon a plate, sprinkled a Cross of salt upon it, and set it for his unseen guest.... Then he resumed his own seat and ate, comprehending that she wished it. And as he ate he talked, in low, soft murmurs, as though answering.... Depend upon it, one never pours out one’s hidden self so freely as when one speaks with the beloved dead.
And then he found himself rising up, bidding God-speed and farewell to the guest unseen, in a solemn form of words quite strange to him. And then he knew himself alone.
Upon the following morning, being unexpectedly visited by the Commandant, he said to the official:
“Sir, I already know what you have come to tell me. My mother died yesterday.”