"Wasn't she called by her real name?"

"Well--er--not always."

Desire's eyebrows became very slanting. "Any name will do," she said coldly.

The professor gathered himself together. "Her name," he said triumphantly, "Was--is Mary."

He had done well for himself this time! His questioner was plainly satisfied with the name Mary. Perhaps lying gets easier as you go on.

He hoped so.

"My mother's name was Mary," said Desire. "It is a lovely name."

Spence felt very proud of himself. Not only had he produced a lovely name in the s.p.a.ce of three seconds and a half, but he had also provided a not-to-be-missed opportunity of changing the subject.

"I suppose you do not remember your mother," he said tentatively.

"Oh yes, I do, although I was quite small when she died. Father says I fancy some of the things I remember. Perhaps I do. I always dream very vividly. And fact and dream are easily confused in a child's mind. My most distinct memories are detached, like pictures, without any before or after to explain them. There is one, for instance, about waking up in the woods at night, wrapped in my mother's shawl and seeing her face, all frightened and white, with the moon, like a great, silver eye, shining through the trees. But I can't imagine why my mother would be hiding in the woods at night."

"Why hiding?"

"There is a sense of hiding that comes with the memory--without anything to account for it But, although I do not remember connected incidents very well, I remember her--the feeling of having her with me.

And the terrible emptiness afterwards. If she had gone quite away, all at once, I couldn't have borne it."

"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 pa.s.s 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?"

"You really and truly need me?" doubtfully.

"Really and truly."

"But if I come, you ought to know something of the life I have lived.

You must realize that I am not an innocent young girl."

"Aren't you?" The professor found it difficult to say this with the proper inflection. It did not sound as business-like as he could have wished. But she was too much absorbed to notice.

"No. I've seen things which young girls do not see. I have heard things which are never whispered before them. No one cared particularly what I saw or heard. When I was smaller there was always someone--some 'housekeeper.' They were all kinds. None of them ever stayed long.

Looking back, it seems as if they pa.s.sed like lurid shadows. Only one of them seemed a real person. The others were husks. Her name was Lily.

She was very stout, her face was red and her voice loud. But there was something real about Lily. And she was fond of children. She liked me.

She went out of her lazy way to teach me wisdom--oh, yes, it was wisdom," in answer to Spence's horrified exclamation, "hard, sordid wisdom, the only wisdom which would have helped me through the back alleys of those days. I am unspeakably grateful to Lily. She spared me much, and once she saved me--I can't tell you about that," she finished simply.

Spence bit his lip on a word to which the expression of his face gave force and meaning. But Desire was not looking at him.

"Do you see why I am different from other girls?" She asked gravely.

The professor restrained himself. "I see that you are different," he said. "I don't care why. But I'm glad that you have told me what you have. It explains something that has bothered me--" he paused seeking words. But she caught up his thought with lightning intuition.

"You mean it explains why marriage isn't beautiful to me, like it may be to a sheltered girl? Yes. I wanted you to see that. It may be holy, but it isn't holy to me. I want to live my life apart from all that. To me it is smirched and sodden and hateful. And now, do you still wish me to come and be your secretary?"

"Now more than ever," said Spence. It was only the sealing of a business transaction. But greatly to his annoyance he could not entirely control a certain warmth and eagerness.

Desire held out a frank hand.

"Then I will marry you when you are ready," she said.

CHAPTER XI

Being a delayed letter from Dr. John Rogers to his friend and patient, Benis Hamilton Spence.