my soul to die and have done with everything, and then there was a strange whirl in the air like a great wind, and loud confused noises, and I fell away out of life, and thought it was death.  And then I awoke again, but it was not here—­it was in a strange wide place—­a sort of twilight, and there were hills and trees.  I stood up, and suddenly felt a hand in my own, and there was a little child beside me, looking up at me.  I can’t tell you what happened next—­it is rather dim to me, but I sate, or walked, or wandered, carrying the child—­ and it talked to me; yes, it talked in a little clear voice, though I can’t remember anything it said; but I felt somehow as if it was telling me what might have been, and that I was getting to know it somehow—­does that seem strange?  It seems like months and years that I was with it; and I feel now that I not only love it, but know it, all its thoughts, all its desires, all its faults—­it had faults, dearest; think of that—­faults such as I have, and other faults as well.  It was not quite content, but it was not unhappy; but it wasn’t a dream-child at all, not like a little angel, but a perfectly real child.  It laughed sometimes, and I can hear its little laughter now; it found fault with me, it wanted to go on—­it cried sometimes, and nothing would please it; but it loved me and wanted to be with me; and I told it about you, and it not only listened, but asked me many times over to tell it more, about you, about me, about this place—­I think it had other things in its mind, recollections, I thought, which it tried to tell me; so it went on.  Once or twice I found myself here in bed—­but I thought I was dying, and only wanted to lose myself and get back to the child—­and then it all came to an end.  There was a great staircase up which we went together; there was cloud at the top, but it seemed to me that there was life and movement behind it; there was no shadow behind the cloud, but light . . . and there was sound, musical sound.  I went up with the child’s hand clasped close in my own, but at the top he disengaged himself, and went in without a word to me or a sign, not as if he were leaving me, but as if his real life, and mine too, were within—­just as a child would run into its home, if you came back with it from a walk, and as if it knew you were following, and there was no need of good-byes.  I did not feel any sorrow at all then, either for the child or myself—­I simply turned round and came down . . . and then I was back in my room again . . . and then it was you that I wanted.”

“That’s all very wonderful,” said Howard, musing, “wonderful and beautiful. . . .  I wish I had seen that!”