This answer delighted him. Virginia! Country of all joy and beauty. He was going to Virginia, if only this summons would cease--if only some far away, disturbing voice was not calling to him from infinite distance, begging him to make some response. He tried to plead that this voice might be silenced. But it grew more and more insistent. He could not hear what it said, but he knew that he was wanted. He might not drift out into the peace he craved. He must stop, and answer, and find out what was expected of him. He tried as hard as he could to turn a deaf ear to the calling. He almost succeeded, several times, in dropping off into real, sound sleep. But just as he was sure that now he would be let alone, something shook him, something interfered with him; and there was a pulsing in his ear, terribly loud, like the voice of a drum, so that one could not escape it. The calling went on. "Osbert! Osbert! I want you! Do you hear me?" Quite suddenly his mind changed, and he knew that it was of supreme importance that he should answer. The difficulty lay in the manner of so doing. How can one communicate with the beating of a drum? He wished that he could explain how unreasonable it was to expect any response from him. He heard right enough, but how could he let anybody know that he heard, with the sea lapping all about and the drum beating in his ears?... Then came a curious sensation, touching a chord which vibrated throughout his entire being. He remembered quite long ago that he had been carrying a girl upstairs. Her arms were round his neck, and her heart beat, beat, against his ear. _Was_ that noise the sound of a drum after all, or was it the quick throbbing of a girl's heart? The moment this idea occurred, it was as though a door had been unclosed, releasing him into the world of which hitherto he had been unconscious. He heard somebody saying: "Lay him down, Mrs. Gaunt, you had much better. He will come round sooner if his head is quite flat." Another voice replied, very, very near him: "I tell you I saw his lips move. All the time he was lying flat he never moved, and directly I lifted him up he sighed. There! Look! I tell you he is alive! I said he was! I knew he would come back if I called!--Osbert! Osbert! Can you hear?" Ah, now, indeed, it would be a grand thing had one the means of letting other people, in other universes, know one's thoughts! He knew he must obey the voice that spoke, yet he was dumb, deaf, blind, because he was so far off. He was sinking away again into the tempting slumber that invited him, in spite of his ardent desire to remain here, where he could be sensible to the beating that was like the beating of a girl's heart.