“Do you mean that she had a long illness?” asked Spence, greatly interested.

“No.  She died suddenly.  It was just—­you will call it silly imagination—­” she broke off uncertainly.

“I might call it imagination without the adjective.”

“Yes.  But it wasn’t.  It was real.  The sense, I mean, that she hadn’t gone away.  Nothing that wasn’t real would have been of the slightest use.”

“It all depends on how we define reality.  What seems real at one time may seem unreal at another.”

She nodded.

“That is just what has happened.  I am not sure, now.  The sense of nearness left me as I grew up.  But at that time, I lived by it.  Do you find the idea absurd?”

“Why should I?  Our knowledge of our own consciousness is the absurdity.  All we know is that our normal waking consciousness is only one special type.  Around it lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different, and quite as real.  Sometimes we, or it, or they, break through.  I am paraphrasing James.  Do you know James?”

“I have read ‘Daisy Miller.’”

“This James was the Daisy Miller man’s brother.”

“Did he believe in the possibility of the dead helping the living?”

“He believed in all kinds of possibilities.  But I don’t think he considered that possibility proven.”

“It couldn’t be proved, could it?” asked Desire thoughtfully.  “Experiences like that are so intensely individual.  One cannot pass them on.”

“Can you describe yours at all?”

“Hardly.  It was just a feeling of Presence.  A sense of her being there.  It came at all sorts of times and in all sorts of places.  We lived in Vancouver when mother died.  It was a much smaller town then, not like the city you have seen.  But after her death we moved about a great deal, never staying very long anywhere, until we came here.  There were—­experiences.”  Her eyes hardened.  “But, as long as I had that sense I am speaking of, I was safe.  I used to have long crying fits in the dark, a kind of blind terror of everything.  And after one of them it nearly always came.  I never questioned it.  Never once did I ask myself, ‘Is it mother?’.  I just knew that it was.  There seemed nothing unusual about it.”

“Was there no one, no woman, to take care of you?”

“There were—­women.”  Desire’s lips tightened into a thin red line.  “We did not travel alone.  Once I remember terrifying a—­a friend of father’s who was ‘looking after’ me.  She heard me crying in my little, dark room one night, and as soon as she could slip away, came in.  She was a kindly sort.  But when she got there I was quite content and happy—­which surprised her much more than the crying had done.  She asked me what had ‘shut me up,’ and I said ’My mother is here—­go away.’  She turned quite pasty-white and the candle shook so that the hot grease fell upon my hands.”

“What a life for a child!” exclaimed Spence in sudden rage.  “Desire dear, you must come with me!  I couldn’t—­couldn’t leave you here.  I--oh, dash it!  I mean, it’s so evident, isn’t it, that we need each other?”