The words that passed between them were now so strange that both their voices sank into solemnity, and had an acute observer listened to them he would have noticed that these two mellow voices had similar beauties, and were pitched exactly in the same key, though there was, of course, an octave between them.

“Understand me?  How should you?  It is all so strange, so mysterious:  I have never told a soul; but I will tell you.  You won’t laugh at me?”

“Laugh at you?  Only fools laugh at what they don’t understand.  Why, Mary, I hang on every word you say with breathless interest.”

“Dear Mr. Hope!  Well, then, I will tell you.  Sometimes in the silent night, when the present does not glare at one, the past comes back to me dimly, and I seem to have lived two lives:  one long, one short—­too short.  My long life in a comfortable house, with servants and carriages and all that.  My short life in different places; not comfortable places, but large places; all was free and open, and there was always a kind voice in my ear—­like yours; and a tender touch—­like yours.”

Hope was restraining himself with difficulty, and here he could not help uttering a faint exclamation.

To cover it he took her wrist again, and bending his head over it, he said, almost in a whisper, “And the face?”

Mary’s eyes turned inward, and she seemed to scan the past.

“The face?” said she—­“the face I can not recall.  But one thing I do remember clearly.  This is not the first time my wrist—­yes—­and it was my right wrist too—­has been bound up so tenderly.  He did it for me in that other world, just as you do in this one.”

Hope now thrilled all over at this most unexpected revelation.  But though he glowed with delight and curiosity, he put on a calm voice and manner, and begged her to tell him everything else she could remember that had happened in that other life.

Finding him so serious, so sympathetic, and so interested, put this remarkable girl on her mettle.  She began to think very hard, and show that intense power of attention she had always in reserve for great occasions.

“Then you must not touch me nor speak to me,” said she.  “The past is such a mist.”

He obeyed, and left off binding her wrist; and now he literally hung upon her words.

Then she took one step away from him; her bright eyes veiled themselves, and seemed to see nothing external, but looked into the recesses of the brain.  Her forehead, her hand, her very body, thought, and we must try, though it is almost hopeless, to convey some faint idea of her manner and her words.

“Let—­me—­see.”

Then she paused.

“I remember—­WHITE SWANS.”

A pause.

“Were they swans?”

“Or ships?”

“They floated down the river to the sea.”

She paused.

“And the kind voice beside me said, ‘Darling!’ Papa never calls me ‘darling.’”