But Coombe mysteriously felt that it was not merely time which had calmed her, though any explanation founded on material reasoning became more remote each day. The thought which came to him at times had no connection with temporal things. He found he was gravely asking himself what aspect mere life would have worn if Alixe had come to him every night in such form as had given him belief in the absolute reality of her being. If he had been convinced that he heard the voice of Alixe--if she had smiled and touched him with her white hands as she had never touched him in life--if her eyes had been unafraid and they had spoken together "only of happy things"--and had understood as one soul--what could the mere days have held of hurt? There was only one possible reply and it seemed to explain his feeling that she was sustained by something which was not alone the mere blessedness of time. He became conscious one morning of the presence of a new expression in her eyes. There was a brave radiance in them and, before, he had known that in their radiance there had been no necessity for bravery. He felt a subtle but curious difference. Her child had been long asleep and she lay like a white dove on her pillows when he came to make his brief good-night visit. She was very still and seemed to be thinking. Her touch on his arm was as the touch of a butterfly when she at last put out her hand to him. "He may not come to-night," she said. He put his own hand over hers and hoped it was done quietly. "But to-morrow night?" trusting that his tone was quiet also. It must be quiet. "Perhaps not for a good many nights. He does not know. I must not ask things. I never do." "But it has been so wonderful that you know--" On what plane was he--on what plane was she? What plane were they talking about with such undoubtingness? Heaven be praised his voice actually sounded natural. "I do not know much--except that he is Donal. And I can never feel as if I were dead again--never." "No," he answered. "Never!" She lay so still for a few minutes that if her eyes had not been open he would have thought she was falling asleep. They were so dreamy that perhaps she was falling asleep and he softly rose to leave her. "I think--he is trying to come nearer," she murmured. "Good-night, dear." CHAPTER XL Ominous hours had come and gone; waves of gloom had surged in and receded, but never receded far enough. It was as though the rising and falling of some primaeval storm was the background of all thought and life and its pandemonium of sound foretold the far-off heaving of some vast tidal wave, gathering its unearthly power as it swelled. Coombe talking to his close friend in her few quiet hours at Eaton Square, found a support in the very atmosphere surrounding her. "The world at war creates a prehistoric uproar," he said. "The earth called out of chaos to take form may have produced some such tempestuous crash. But there is a far-off glow--"