* * * * *

Arriving at Portsmouth the next morning, I made my residence in the first house in which I found an instrument, a spacious dwelling facing the Harbour Pier.  I then hurried round to the Exchange, which is on the Hard near the Docks, a large red building with facings of Cornish moor-stone, a bank on the ground-floor, and the Exchange on the first.  Here I plugged her number on to mine, ran back, rang—­and, to my great thanksgiving, heard her speak. (This instrument, however, did not prove satisfactory:  I broke the box, and put in another battery, and still the voice was muffled:  finally, I furnished the middle room at the Exchange with a truckle-bed, stores, and a few things, and here have taken up residence.)

I believe that she lives and sleeps under the instrument, as I here live and sleep, sleep and live, under it.  My instrument is quite near one of the harbour-windows, so that, hearing her, I can gaze out toward her over the expanse of waters, yet see her not; and she, too, looking over the sea toward me, can hear a voice from the azure depths of nowhere, yet see me not.

* * * * *

I this morning early to her: 

‘Good morning!  Are you there?’

‘Good morning!  No:  I am there,’ says she.

‘Well, that was what I asked—­“are you there"?’

‘But I not here, I am there,’ says she.

‘I know very well that you are not “here,"’ said I, ’for I do not see you:  but I asked if you were there, and you say “No,” and then “Yes."’

‘It is the paladox of the heart,’ says she.

‘The what?’

‘The paladox,’ says she.

’But still I do not understand:  how can you be both there and not there?’

‘If my ear is here, and I elsewhere?’ says she.

‘An operation?’

‘Yes!’ says she.

‘What doctor?’

‘A specialist!’ says she.

‘An ear-specialist?’

‘A heart!’ says she.

‘And you let a heart-specialist operate on your ear?’

‘On myself he operlated, and left the ear behind!’ says she.

‘Well, and how are you after it?’

‘Fairly well.  Are you?’ says she.

‘Quite well.  Did you sleep well?’

‘Except when you lang me up at midnight.  I have had such a dleam ...’

‘What?’

’I dleamed that I saw two little boys of the same age—­only I could not see their faces, I never can see anybody’s face, only yours and mine, mine and yours always—­of the same age—­playing in a wood....’

‘Ah, I hope that one of them was not called Cain, my poor girl.’

’Not at all! neither of them!  Suppose I tell a stoly, and say that one was called Caius and the other Tibelius, or one John and the other Jesus?’

‘Ah.  Well, tell me the dleam....’

‘Now you do not deserve.’

‘Well, what will you do to-day?’