penetrated at last into some recess of her being into which hitherto she had only looked as through clouded glass.  This was very strange, and yet it was familiar, too; she had arrived, it seemed, at a centre, round the circumference of which she had been circling all her life; and it was more than a mere point:  it was a distinct space, walled and enclosed....  At the same instant she knew that hearing, too, was gone....

Then an amazing thing happened—­yet it appeared to her that she had always known it would happen, although her mind had never articulated it.  This is what happened.

The enclosure melted, with a sound of breaking, and a limitless space was about her—­limitless, different to everything else, and alive, and astir.  It was alive, as a breathing, panting body is alive—­self-evident and overpowering—­it was one, yet it was many; it was immaterial, yet absolutely real—­real in a sense in which she never dreamed of reality....

Yet even this was familiar, as a place often visited in dreams is familiar; and then, without warning, something resembling sound or light, something which she knew in an instant to be unique, tore across it....

* * * * *

Then she saw, and understood....

CHAPTER V

I

Oliver had passed the days since Mabel’s disappearance in an indescribable horror.  He had done all that was possible:  he had traced her to the station and to Victoria, where he lost her clue; he had communicated with the police, and the official answer, telling him nothing, had arrived to the effect that there was no news:  and it was not until the Tuesday following her disappearance that Mr. Francis, hearing by chance of his trouble, informed him by telephone that he had spoken with her on the Friday night.  But there was no satisfaction to be got from him—­indeed, the news was bad rather than good, for Oliver could not but be dismayed at the report of the conversation, in spite of Mr. Francis’s assurances that Mrs. Brand had shown no kind of inclination to defend the Christian cause.

Two theories gradually emerged, in his mind; either she was gone to the protection of some unknown Catholic, or—­and he grew sick at the thought—­she had applied somewhere for Euthanasia as she had once threatened, and was now under the care of the Law; such an event was sufficiently common since the passing of the Release Act in 1998.  And it was frightful that he could not condemn it.

* * * * *

On the Tuesday evening, as he sat heavily in his room, for the hundredth time attempting to trace out some coherent line through the maze of intercourse he had had with his wife during these past months, his bell suddenly rang.  It was the red label of Whitehall that had made its appearance; and for an instant his heart leaped with hope that it was news of her.  But at the first words it sank again.