Athalie

"Here?"

"Yes, Clive."

"So near!" he said aloud to himself. "Couldn't he have spoken to

me?--just one word--"

"Dearest--dearest!"

"God knows why you should see him and I shouldn't! I don't

understand--when I was his son--"

"I do not understand either, Clive."

He seemed not to hear her, standing there with blank gaze shifting

from object to object in the room. "I don't understand," he kept

repeating in a dull, almost querulous voice,--"I don't understand

why." And her heart responded in a passion of tenderness and grief.

But she found no further words to say to him, no explanation that

might comfort him.

"Will he ever come here--anywhere--again?" he asked suddenly.

"Oh, Clive, I don't know."

"Don't you know? Couldn't you find out?"

"How? I don't know how to find out. I never try to inquire."

"Isn't there some way?"

"I don't really know, Clive. How could I know?"

"But when you see such people--shadows--shapes--"

"Yes.... They are not shadows."

"Do they seem real?"

"Why, yes; as real as you are."

"Athalie, how can they be?"

"They are to me. There is nothing ghostly about them."

For a moment it almost seemed to her as though he resented her clear

seeing; then he said: "Have you always been able to see--this way?"

"As long as I can remember."

"And you have never tried to cultivate the power?"

"I had rather you did not call it that."

"But it is a power.... Well, call it faculty, then. Have you?"

"No. I told you once that I did not wish to see more clearly than

others. It is all involuntary with me."

"Would you try to cultivate it because I ask you to?"

"Clive!"

"Will you, Athalie?"

The painful colour mantled her face and neck and she turned and looked

away from him as though he had said a shameful thing.

He continued, impatiently: "Why do you feel that way about it? Why

should you not cultivate such a delicate and wonderful sense of

perception? Why are you reluctant? What reason is there for you to be

ashamed?"

"I don't know why."

"There is no reason! If in you there happen to be faculties sensitive

beyond ours, senses more complex, more exquisitely attuned to what

others are blind and deaf to, intuitions that to us seem miraculous, a

spirituality, perhaps, more highly developed, what is there in that to

cause you either embarrassment or concern? That in certain

individualities such is the case is now generally understood and

recognised. You happen to be one of them."