Cleves strove to speak naturally, but his voice trembled.
“Is it you—I mean your real self—your own body?”
“It’s my real self. Yes. But my body is asleep in my mulberry grove.”
“In—in China?”
“Yes,” she said calmly, detaching another mulberry and eating it. A few fresh leaves fell on the centre table.
Sansa chose another berry. “You know,” she said, “that I came to Tressa this morning,—to my little Heart of Fire I came when she called me. And I was quite sleepy, too. But I heard her, though there was a night wind in the mulberry trees, and the river made a silvery roaring noise in the dark.... And now I must go. But I shall come again very soon.”
She smiled shyly and held out her lovely little hand, “—As Tressa tells me is your custom in America,” she said, “I offer you a good-bye.”
He took her hand and found it a warm, smooth thing of life and pulse.
“Why,” he stammered in his astonishment, “you are real! You are not a ghost!”
“Yes, I am real,” she answered, surprised, “but I’m not in my body,—if you mean that.” Then she laughed and withdrew her hand, and, going, made him a friendly gesture.