little old gentleman to Mrs. Camelford, "you are the only one left. The whole thing will be incomplete without you."
"I have no wish to drink," said Mrs. Camelford, and her eyes sought those of her husband, but he would not look at her.
"Come," again urged the Figure. And then Camelford looked at her and laughed drily.
"You had better drink," he said. "It's only a dream."
"If you wish it," she answered. And it was from his hands she took the glass.
It is from the narrative as Armitage told it to me that night in the Club smoking-room that I am taking most of my material. It seemed to him that all things began slowly to rise upward, leaving him stationary, but with a great pain as though the inside of him were being torn away—the same sensation greatly exaggerated, so he likened it, as descending in a lift. But around him all the time was silence and darkness unrelieved. After a period that might have been minutes, that might have been years, a faint light crept towards him. It grew stronger, and into the air which now fanned his cheek there stole the sound of far-off music. The light and the music both increased, and one by one his senses came back to him. He was seated on a low cushioned bench beneath a group of palms. A young girl was sitting beside him, but her face was turned away from him.
"I did not catch your name," he was saying. "Would you mind telling it to me?"
She turned her face towards him. It was the most spiritually beautiful face he had ever seen. "I am in the same predicament," she laughed. "You had better write yours on my programme, and I will write mine on yours."
So they wrote upon each other's programme and exchanged again. The name she had written was Alice Blatchley.
He had never seen her before, that he could remember. Yet at the back of his mind there dwelt the haunting knowledge of her. Somewhere long ago they had met, talked together. Slowly, as one recalls a dream, it came back to him. In some other life, vague, shadowy, he had married this woman. For the first few years they had loved each other; then the gulf had opened between them, widened.
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