His face like the face of younger prophets, the seers, took on a half-inspired expression.

He looked vaguely before him with unseeing eyes.
"Suppose," he murmured, "suppose I stand there under the pear trees at night and call her again and again, and each time the Answer comes nearer and nearer and I wait until at last one night, the supreme night of all, she--she----" Suddenly the tension broke.

With a sharp cry and a violent uncertain gesture of the hand Vanamee came to himself.
"Oh," he exclaimed, "what is it?
Do I dare?
What does it mean?
There are times when it appals me and there are times when it thrills me with a sweetness and a happiness that I have not known since she died.

The vagueness of it! How can I explain it to you, this that happens when I call to her across the night--that faint, far-off, unseen tremble in the darkness, that intangible, scarcely perceptible stir.

Something neither heard nor seen, appealing to a sixth sense only.