And a thought-presence was precisely what it was.  A thousand circumstances may stretch that hyphen which at once links and separates the sign-syllables of the wonderful fact; an impossibility, of physical conditions, may be between; but the fact subsists—­and in rare moments we know it—­when that which belongs to us comes invisibly and takes us to itself; when we feel the footsteps afar off which may or may not be feet of the flesh turned toward us.  Yet even this conjunction does happen, now and again; the will—­the blessed purpose—­is accomplished at once on earth and in heaven.

When many minutes after the city bells had ceased to sound for nine o’clock, the bell of her own door rang with a clear, strong stroke, Desire Ledwith thought instantly of Mr. Kirkbright with a singular recall,—­that was less a change than a transfer of the same perception,—­from the inward to the actual.  She had no reason to suppose it,—­no ordinary reason why,—­but she was suddenly persuaded that the friend who in the last hour had stood spiritually beside her, stood now, in reality, upon her door-stone.

She did not even wonder for what he could have come.  She did not move from her chair; she did not lift her crossed hands from off her open book.  She did not break the external conditions in which unseen forces had been acting.  If she had moved,—­pushed back her chair,—­put by her book,—­it would have begun to seem strange, she would have been back in a bond of circumstance which would have embarrassed her; she would have been receiving an evening call at an unusual hour.  But to have the verity come in and fill the dream,—­this was not strange.  And yet Christopher Kirkbright had scarcely been in that house ten times before.

She heard him ask if Miss Ledwith were still below; if he might see her.  She heard Frendely close the outer door, and precede him toward the door of the library.  He entered, and she lifted her eyes.

“Don’t move,” he said quickly.  “I have been seeing you sitting like that, all the evening.  It is a reverie come true.  Only I have walked out of my end of it, and into yours.  May I stay a little while?”

Her face answered him in a very natural way.  There was a wonder in her eyes, and in the smile that crept over her lips; there were wonder and waiting in the silence which she kept, answering in her face only, at the first, that peculiar greeting.  Perhaps any woman, who had had no dream, would have found other response as difficult.

“I am going back to Brickfields to-morrow.  I am more eager than ever to get the home finished there, for those who are waiting for its shelter.  I have had a busy day,—­a busy evening; it has not been a still reverie in which I have seen you.  In this last half hour, I have been with Vireo.  He has found a woman for me who can be a directress of work; can manage the sewing-room.  A good woman, too, who will mother—­not ’matron’—­the girls.  I have