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On a table near the fireplace stood spirits. The maddened husband went to them, filled a tumbler half full with brandy, added a little water and drank it off.

He poured more brandy into the glass and began to think. To Barbara his mind was as an open book and she read what was passing there. What she saw were such thoughts as these: “My only comfort, and yet till within two years ago, whatever else I did, I never touched drink. I swore to my mother that I never would, and had she been alive to-day—-. But Bess always liked her glass, and drinking alone is no company. Ah! if my mother had lived everything would have been different, for I outgrew the bad fit and might have become quite a decent fellow. But then I met Bess again by chance, and she had the old hold on me, and there was none to keep me back, and she knew how to play her fish until I married her. The old aunt never found it out. If she had I shouldn’t have 8,000 pounds a year to-day. I lied to her about that, and I wonder what she thinks of me now, if she can think where she is gone. I wonder what my mother thinks also, and my father, who was a good man by all accounts, though nobody seems to remember much about him. Supposing that they could see me now, supposing that they could have been at that supper party and witnessed the conjugal interview between me and the female creature who is my legal wife, what would they think? Well, they are dead and can’t, for the dead don’t come back. The dead are just a few double handfuls of dirt, no more, and since no doubt I shall join them before very long, I thank God for it, or rather I would if there were a God to thank. Here’s to the company of the Dead who will never hear or see or feel anything more from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.”

Then he drank off the second half tumbler of brandy, hid his face in his hands and began to sob, muttering:

“Mother, why did you leave me? Oh, mother, come back to me, mother, and save my soul from hell!”

Barbara and Anthony awoke from their dream of the dreadful earth and looked into each other’s hearts.

“It is true,” said their hearts, which could not lie, and with those words all the glory of their state faded to a grey nothingness.

“You have seen and heard,” said Barbara. “It was my sin which has brought this misery on our son, who, had I lived on, might have been saved. Now through me he is lost, who step by step of his own will must travel downwards to the last depth, and thence, perhaps, never be raised again. This is the thing that I have done, yes, I whom blind judges in the world held to be good.”

“I have seen and heard,” he answered, “and joy has departed from me. Yet what wrong have you worked, who did not know?”

“Come, my father,” called Barbara to that spirit who in the flesh had been named Septimus Walrond, “come, you who are holy, and pray that light may be given to us.”

So he came and prayed and from the Heavens above fell a vision in answer to his prayer. The vision was that of the fate of the soul of the son of Anthony and Barbara through a thousand, thousand ages that were to come, and it was a dreadful fate.

“Pray again, my father,” said Barbara, “and ask if it may be changed.”

So the spirit of Septimus Walrond prayed, and the spirits of his daughters and of the daughter of Anthony and Barbara prayed with him. Together they kneeled and prayed to the Glory that shone above.

There came another vision, that of a little child leading a man by the hand, and the child was Barbara and the man was he who had been her son. By a long and difficult path–upwards, ever upwards–she led him, and the end of that path was not seen.

Then these spirits prayed that the meaning of this vision might be made more clear. But to that prayer there came no answer.

Barbara went apart into a wilderness where thorns grew and there endured the agony of temptation. On the one hand lay the pure life of joy which, like the difficult path that had been shown to her, led upwards, ever upwards to yet greater joy, shared with those she loved. On the other hand lay the seething hell of Earth, to be once more endured through many mortal years and–a soul to save alive. None might counsel her, none might direct her. She must choose and choose alone. Not in fear of punishment, for this was not possible to her. Not in hope of glory, for that she must inherit, but only for the hope’s sake that she might–save a soul alive.

Out of her deep heart’s infinite love and charity thus she chose in atonement of her mortal sin. And as she chose the great arc of Heaven above her, that had been grey and silent, burst to splendour and to song.

So Barbara for a while bade farewell to those who loved her, bade farewell to Anthony her heart’s heart. Once more, alone, utterly alone, she laid her on the couch in the great chamber with the translucent dome and thence her spirit was whirled back through nothingness to the hell of Earth, there to be born again in the child of the evil woman, that it might save a soul alive.

Thus did the sweet and holy Barbara–Barbara who came back–in atonement of her sin.

For her reward, as she fights on in hope, she has memory and such visions as are written here.