"What!" he exclaimed, astonished.
"I have been aware of it for weeks," she said tranquilly.
He remained silent; she continued to caress his hair:
"Your wife," she went on thoughtfully, "will learn much when she dies. There is a compulsory university course which awaits us all,—a school with many forms and many grades and many, many pupils. But we must die before we can be admitted.... I have never before spoken to you as I have spoken to-day.... Perhaps I never shall again.... The world is a blind place—lovely but blind.
"As for the woman who wears your name but wears no ring of yours she has been moving through my crystal for many days;—I would have made no effort to intrude on her had she not persisted in the crystal, haunted it,—I cannot tell you why—only that she is always there, now.... And last night I knew that she was in New York, and why she had come here.... Shall you see her to-day?"
"Where is she?"
"At the Regina."
"Are you sure?"
The girl calmly closed her eyes for a moment. After a brief silence she opened them: "She is still there.... She will awake in a little while and ring for her breakfast. The two men you drove out of the garden last night are waiting to see her. There is another man there. I think he is your wife's attorney.... Have you decided to see her?"