‘Of course,’ came the answering whisper, soft as moonlight, ‘because I never left you for a single moment. I was in everything you did—in your very words. Once or twice, I even got into mother too, _through you_, and made her feel better. Wasn’t that splendid?’ Paul longed to give the child one of his old hugs—to feel her little warm and sunny body pressed against his own. Instead, her laughter echoed suddenly all about the room. ‘That’s impossible now!’ he heard. ‘I’m ever so much closer this way. You’ll soon get used to it, you know!’ This spontaneous laughter was the music to which all their talks were set. He laughed too, and blew the candles out. ‘I tried very hard to say the true things,’ he murmured, referring to her remark about comforting his sister. ‘I know you did. That’s how I got into her—through you. You must go on and on trying. In the end we’ll get her all soft and happy again. She’ll feel me without knowing it.’ Suddenly it struck him that, although the room was dark, he did not see the light of the little torch as before. He missed it. He was just going to ask why it was absent when the child caught his thought and replied of her own accord: ‘Because it’s spread all over now, instead of being just a point. You are in it, I mean. There’s light everywhere about you now, and I see you much clearer than last time.’ The explanation described exactly what he felt himself. ‘Let them in, please,’ Nixie suddenly interrupted his thoughts again. ‘They’re both coming up the stairs. It was very naughty of you to forget them, you know.’ After a moment of puzzled hesitation he understood what she meant, and was out of bed and across the floor. He did not wait to light a candle, but opened the door and stood there waiting in the darkness. Almost at once two soft, furry things brushed past his feet as Smoke, followed by Mrs. Tompkyns, marched into the room, uttering that curious sharp sound of pleasure which is something between a purr and a cry. They disappeared among the shadows beyond the fireplace, and Paul sprang back into bed again pleased that they were there, yet annoyed with himself for having forgotten them. ‘But it was my fault _really_,’ she laughed. ‘I’ve been with them out in the garden, and they’ve only just got in through the pantry window. My presence excites them awfully. Oh, it’s all right,’ she added quickly, in reply to his further thought; ‘Barker’s very late to-night doing the silver. But he’ll shut the window before he goes.’ It was his turn to laugh. She had caught his thought about the window almost before it reached the surface of his mind. Moreover, he found that both Mrs. Tompkyns and Smoke had very cold wet soles under their padded little feet.