"I have come a long way--such a long way--to have an _abboccamento_ with you. I had so many things to say. And now we are both here, hand in hand as we used to be, I can't even understand what they were; and if I could, I couldn't make _you_ understand. But you will know some day, and there is no hurry whatever. "Every thought you have had since I died, I know already; _your_ share of the circuit is unbroken at least. I know now why you picked up those stones and put them in your pockets. You must never think of _that_ again--you never will. Besides, it would be of no use, poor Gogo!" Then she looked up at the sky and all round her again, and smiled in her old happy manner, and rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands, and seemed to settle herself for a good long talk--an _abboccamento!_ * * * * * Of all she said I can only give a few fragments--whatever I can recall and understand when awake. Wherever I have forgotten I will put a line of little dots. Only when I sleep and dream can I recall and understand the rest. It seems all very simple then. I often say to myself, "I will fix it well in my mind, and put it into well-chosen words--_her_ words--and learn them by heart; and then wake cautiously and remember them, and write them all down in a book, so that they shall do for others all they have done for me, and turn doubt into happy certainty, and despair into patience and hope and high elation." [Illustration: "IT IS MARY SERASKIER!"] But the bell rings and I wake, and my memory plays me false. Nothing remains but the knowledge _that all will be well for us all, and of such a kind that those who do not sigh for the moon will be well content_. Alas, this knowledge: I cannot impart it to others. Like many who have lived before me, I cannot prove--I can only affirm.... * * * * * "How odd and old-fashioned it feels," she began, "to have eyes and ears again, and all that--little open windows on to what is near us. They are very clumsy contrivances! I had already forgotten them." * * * * * Look, there goes our old friend, the water-rat, under the bank--the old fat father--_le bon gros pere_--as we used to call him. He is only a little flat picture moving upsidedown in the opposite direction across the backs of our eyes, and the farther he goes the smaller he seems. A couple of hundred yards off we shouldn't see him at all. As it is, we can only see the outside of him, and that only on one side at a time; and yet he is full of important and wonderful things that have taken millions of years to make--like us! And to see him at all we have to look straight at him--and then we can't see what's behind us or around--and if it was dark we couldn't see anything whatever. Poor eyes! Little bags full of water, with a little magnifying-glass inside, and a nasturtium leaf behind--to catch the light and feel it!