What is Sinfire thinking of now? And what is she doing? She does not seem far off. The sympathy between us is no fancy: we live one life. In time, perhaps, we shall be aware of each other's thoughts and movements, even at a distance.
What a gulf night is, between one day and another! Sometimes it may mark a transition as great as between this life and the next. The night that separates the maiden from the woman, the wife from the mother, innocence from guilt,—is the distance between the body and the spirit wider than these?
What will the morning bring forth? Will it find me as I am now? Hardly. Nothing will be as it is now, — not even the Creator of all. The veil of the future is not so impenetrable as has been maintained. Again and again has it become transparent to certain eyes at certain seasons. Sickness and health, calamity and joy, life and death, have been foreseen and foretold; but one thing has never been foretold; and that is, the effect of a new experience upon a human soul. . . .
Have I been asleep? I fancy so; and I have had a strange dream. But it was only a dream. Everything around me is unchanged,—my paper, my books, my chair, my stool with my foot upon it. But it is near morning. Was it a dream? Has anything happened outside while I slept?
Some one is knocking at the door!
XII.
Henry, my brother, forgive the hard things I have thought of you! Everything dwindles into insignificance in the presence of a calamity such as this. How futile and insincere all my speculations seem now! And now repentance is as futile, however sincere it may be. But we must not think of our sorrow yet. The first thing to be done is to discover, and to punish.
I shall never forget that knocking at my door. I can hear it now: I shall hear it in my dreams. It seemed to carry its message with it, before a word was spoken. And yet, when the words were spoken, I could not understand them: they fell like meaningless sounds on my ear. And I cannot help thinking that, had I been well and about that night, this would not have happened. He must have exposed himself needlessly. He was always heedless, confident, and fearless. I remember his saying, once, that he bore a charmed life. A curse on all superstitions! And be those juggling fiends no more believed who palter with us in a double sense
It could not have happened earlier than two o'clock in the morning.
