And he slowly drew with the point of his stick an imaginary line from the five-franc piece to the left of her, at right angles to where she stood. When the point of the stick was about two feet from the coin, she said: "Tiens, tiens, I no longer see the piece!" When the point of the stick had got a foot farther on, she said, "Now I can see the piece again quite plain." Then he tried the same experiment on her left eye, rightwards, with the same result. Then he experimented with equal success on her father and mother, and found that every eye at No. 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches had exactly the same blind spot as his own. Then off he went to Antwerp to see his friends with a light heart--the first light heart he had known for many months; but when he got there he was so preoccupied with what had happened that he did not care to see anybody. He walked about the ramparts and along the Scheldt, and read and re-read that extraordinary letter. Who and what could Martia be? The reminiscence of some antenatal incarnation of his own soul? The soul of some ancestor or ancestress--of his mother, perhaps? or, perhaps, some occult portion of himself--of his own brain in unconscious cerebration during sleep? As a child and a small boy, and even as a very young man, he had often dreamt at night of a strange, dim land by the sea, a land unlike any land he had ever beheld with the waking eye, where beautiful aquatic people, mermen and mermaids and charming little mer-children (of which he was one) lived an amphibious life by day, diving and sporting in the waves. Splendid caverns, decorated with precious stones, and hung with soft moss, and shining with a strange light; heavenly music, sweet, affectionate caresses--and then total darkness; and yet one knew who and what and where everything and everybody was by some keener sense than that of sight. It all seemed strange and delightful, but so vague and shadowy it was impossible to remember anything clearly; but ever pervading all things was that feeling of the north which had always been such a comfort to him. Was this extraordinary letter the result of some such forgotten dream he may have had during the previous night, and which may have prompted him to write it in his sleep? some internal knowledge of the anatomy of his own eye which was denied to him when awake? Anyhow, it was evidently true about that blind spot in the retina (the _punctum coecum_), and that he had been frightening himself out of his wits for nothing, and that his right eye was really sound; and, all through this wondrous yet simple revelation, it was time this old hysterical mock-disease should die. Once more life was full of hopes and possibilities, and with such inarticulate and mysterious promptings as he often felt within his soul, and such a hidden gift to guide them, what might he not one day develop into?