“But surely time and space in the next world will not exist as we understand them here, and that must make an almost incalculable difference. And when you think that so many gave their lives for this world, isn’t it reasonable to think that the work for some of them may still be linked up with it? Do you remember when you were talking of the outlook at the present moment, and Lady Condor asked me what I thought of it? And I said we were not alone, that those who had died that things might be better, they with their added knowledge—guided—helped—you remember? Well, that wasn’t _my own_ idea somehow. It came to me from somewhere else, quite suddenly, on the moment, as it were. And I had to say it—though I felt shy and uncomfortable. One does not speak of these things to all the world. But _some one_ wanted me to say it—just then and there.” She stopped, and in both their minds was a vision of Violet Riversley’s beautiful angry unhappy face. “I remember,” answered North. “And your idea is that Dick’s mind can communicate with yours by thought?” Ruth thought a little; her eyes looked out without seeing. “It is not an idea,” she said at last. “I know.” “And have you any idea or knowledge why it should be so, seeing you never knew each other in this life? If you had, and had loved very deeply, it would be more comprehensible, though less interesting from the point of view of proving communication. As it is, there seems to me nothing sufficiently important to account for it. Nothing beyond a certain likeness of thought and interests.” Ruth smiled. The interest had gripped him again. He was thinking out aloud. She waited until he looked at her. “What is your explanation?” he asked. And suddenly Ruth found it amazingly difficult to explain. The memory of that velvet night of stars, the message in the song of the little brown bird, the revelation which had come to her, swept over her again with a renewed and surprising sweetness, but of words she seemed bereft. Compared with the wonder and beauty of the thought they seemed utterly inadequate and hopeless. She put out both her hands with a little foreign gesture of helplessness. “You have none?” he asked, and she caught the disappointment in his voice, and looking at him saw, as she had seen once before on his first visit, the lonely tired soul of the man who, losing Dick Carey, had lost much. And Dick Carey was there, so very surely there. “It isn’t the personal love for one that really brings together,” she said, her voice very, very gentle. “It is the love for everything that has life or breath. _That_ love must be communion. It makes you belong.” There was a little silence before she went on: