She looked at him. His face was bright and cheerful, interested, and perhaps a little perplexed; but above all, cheerful, alert and rather exhilarated. She continued. “Remember this: We here are all dwellers on the threshold which is between things seen with the physical vision (so to say) and the things which are invisible to those eyes. We are chiefly interested in getting ourselves (and keeping ourselves) in right relations to the realms of supersensuous life, with which we may choose to surround ourselves. For of course we draw about us spirits, which in tendencies and longings are like ourselves. Listen to me: One of the family here, who has a far-reaching inheritance of psychic-faculty and self-poised spiritual power, is—” “Is,” said Reginald, “the one woman in the world who is, in a way, my wife more than you are.” Alitza sprang to her feet, flushed and with blazing eyes. For however thoroughly she ought to have been glad that the way was so clear, and Reginald so evidently relieved and ready to give her up, she was not prepared for this raw style of arriving at the conclusion. Till, suddenly, “Truth is his strong point, you know,” seemed uttered in her ears, as if in Ethel’s distant spirit tone. She caught herself up and steadied her angry pulse, and listened, trembling and expectant; but there was nothing more. Then “Very well, you know your business and I know mine,” she said, and left him. He had all his wits about him, and filled with a sudden sense of the electric shock which Bertha’s finger-point had sent through him on the day of Ethel’s conversation with her, he gathered up (with a tingling sense of shame) all that they together had one day said of him, as being “a fool not worth mothering.” The blood surged through his brain, bubbling up cleansingly through all the stagnant cells, bringing him in its parts and as a whole, a memory of the things which had been going on about him for the five years of double-consciousness through which he had lived. Later in the day he felt strangely happy, and clear-headed and proud, and ready for life; as if he had been assured by competent judges that he was really a much more level-headed man, and had always been more level-headed, with a much clearer eye for the main point at stake, than anything in his stultified life heretofore had proved. He saw perfectly well that the story of his life could not end here amid the congratulations of his friends over his return to health, and their assurances in relation to Mrs. Mancredo that he was a lucky fellow, with a wife possessed of such faithfulness and maturity of youthful power. For of course the story that she was his wife, and all the rest of it, had gotten abroad. And Reginald knew it had.