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“Yes, perfectly,” I said. “It is very curious.” He said in a kind of muse, “I don’t know just where I was.” Then he began again, “Oh, yes! It was at the ceremony–down there in the library. Some of the country people came in; I suppose they thought they ought, and I suppose they wanted to; it didn’t matter to me. I had sent for Doctor Norrey, as soon as the relapse came, and he was there with me. Of course there was the minister, conducting the services. He made a prayer full of helpless repetitions, which I helplessly noticed, and some scrambling remarks, mostly misdirected at me, affirming and reaffirming that the sister they had lost was only gone before, and that she was now in a happier world.

“The singing and the praying and the preaching came to an end, and then there was that soul-sickening hush, that exanimate silence, of which the noise of rustling clothes and scraping feet formed a part, as the people rose in the hall, where chairs had been put for them, leaving me and Norrey alone with Marion. Every fibre of my frame recognized the moment of parting, and protested. A tremendous wave of will swept through me and from me, a resistless demand for her presence, and it had power upon her. I heard her speak, and say, as distinctly as I repeat the words, ‘I will come for you!’ and the youth and the beauty that had been growing more and more wonderful in her face, ever since she died, shone like a kind of light from it. I answered her, ‘I am ready now!’ and then Norrey scuffled to his feet, with a conventional face of sympathy, and said, ‘No hurry, my dear Alderling,’ and I knew he had not heard or seen anything, as well as I did afterwards when I questioned him. He thought I was giving them notice that they could take her away. What do you think?”

“How what do I think?” I asked.

“Do you think that it happened?”

There was something in Alderling’s tone and manner that made me, instead of answering directly that I did not, temporize and ask, “Why?”

“Because–because,” and Alderling caught his breath, like a child that is trying to keep itself from crying, “because I don’t.” He broke into a sobbing that seemed to wrench and tear his poor little body, and if I had thought of anything to say, I could not have said it to his headlong grief with any hope of assuaging it. “I am satisfied now,” he said, at last, wiping his wet face, and striving for some composure of its trembling features, “that it was all a delusion, the effect of my exaltation, of my momentary aberration, perhaps. Don’t be afraid of saying what you really think,” he added scornfully, “with the notion of sparing me. You couldn’t doubt it, or deny it, more completely than I do.”

I confess this unexpected turn struck me dumb. I did not try to say anything, and Alderling went on.

“I don’t deny that she is living, but I can’t believe that I shall ever live to see her again, or if you prefer, die to see her. There is the play of the poor animal instinct, or the mechanical persistence of expectation in me, so that I can’t shut the doors without the sense of shutting her out, can’t put out the lights without feeling that I am leaving her in the dark. But I know it is all foolishness, as well as you do, all craziness. If she is alive it is because she believed she should live, and I shall perish because I didn’t believe. I should like to believe, now, if only to see her again, but it is too late. If you disuse any member of your body, or any faculty of your mind, it withers away and if you deny your soul your soul ceases to be.”