4

I left him and went upstairs, knowing I must get all the strength I could before to-morrow.

My poor little girl a widow!  I could hardly realise it.  And yet, alas, how many young widows we have among us in these days!  Only they are widowed for a noble cause, not by a horrid accident on the stairs.  Poor Oliver, of course, had exemption from military service; he never even had to go before the tribunal for it, but had it direct from the War Office, like nearly all Percy’s staff, who were recognised by the Government as doing more important work at home than they could have done at the front.  I have a horror of the men who evaded service during the war, but men like Oliver Hobart, who would have preferred to be fighting but stayed to do invaluable work for their country, one must respect.  And it seemed very bitter that Oliver, who hadn’t fallen in the war, should have fallen now down his own stairs.  Poor, poor Oliver!  As I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I saw his beautiful face before me.  He was quite the most beautiful man I have ever known.  I have given his personal appearance to the hero of one of my novels, Sidney, a Man.  It was terrible to me to think of that beauty lost from the world.  Whatever view one may take of another world (and personally, far as I am from any orthodox view on the subject, my spiritual investigations have convinced me that there is, there must be, a life to come; I have had the most wonderful experiences, that may not be denied) physical beauty, one must believe, is a phenomenon of this physical universe, and must perish with the body.  Unless, as some thinkers have conceived, the immortal soul wraps itself about in some aural vapour that takes the form it wore on earth.  This is a possibility, and I would gladly believe it.  I must, I decided, try to bring my poor Jane into touch with psychic interests; it would comfort her to have the wonderful chance of getting into communication with Oliver.  At present she scouts the whole thing, like all other forms of supernatural belief.  Jane has always been a materialist.  It is very strange to me that my children have developed, intellectually and spiritually, along such different lines from myself.  I have never been orthodox; I am not even now an orthodox theosophist; I am not of the stuff which can fall into line and accept things from others; it seems as if I must always think for myself, delve painfully, with blood and tears, for Truth.  But I have always been profoundly religious; the spiritual side of life has always meant a very great deal to me; I think I feel almost too intensely the vibration of Spirit in the world of things.  I probe, and wonder, and cannot let it alone, like most people, and be content with surfaces.  Of late years, and especially since I took up theosophy, I have found great joy and comfort from my association with the S.P.R.  I am in touch with several very wonderful thought-readers, crystal-gazers, mediums,