"I really can't say; I don't think I ever heard him mention your name!" This was not absolutely veracious on Leah's part; for to Barty in those days this particular great man was a god, and he was always full of him. But it brought the immense one back to his bearings at once, and he left off patronizing and was almost humble. Anyhow, it was a lie so white that the recording angel will probably delete what there is of it with a genial smile, and leave a little blank in its place. * * * * * In an old diary of Leah's I find the following entry: "March 6th, 1874.--Mamma and Ida Scatcherd came to stay. In the evening our sixth daughter and eighth child was born." Julia (Mrs. Mainwaring) was this favored person--and is still. Julia and her predecessors have all lived and flourished up to now. The Josselins had been exceptionally fortunate in their children; each new specimen seemed an even finer specimen than the last. The health of this remarkable family had been exemplary--measles, and mumps, and whooping-cough their only ailments. During the month of Leah's confinement Barty's nocturnal literary activity was unusually great. Night after night he wrote in his sleep, and accumulated enough raw material to last him a lifetime; for the older he grew and the more practised his hand the longer it took him to give his work the shape he wished; he became more fastidious year by year as he became less of an amateur. One morning, a day or two before his wife's complete recovery, he found a long personal letter from Martia by his bedside--a letter that moved him very deeply, and gave him food for thought during many weeks and months and years: * * * * * "My Beloved Barty,--The time has come at last when I must bid you farewell. "I have outstayed my proper welcome on earth as a disembodied conscience by just a hundred years, and my desire for reincarnation has become an imperious passion not to be resisted. "It is more than a desire--it is a duty as well, a duty far too long deferred. "Barty, I am going to be your next child. I can conceive no greater earthly felicity than to be a child of yours and Leah's. I should have been one long before, but that you and I have had so much to do together for this beautiful earth--a great debt to pay: you, for being as you are; I, for having known you. "Barty, you have no conception what you are to me and always have been. [Illustration: "'I DON'T THINK I EVER HEARD HIM MENTION YOUR NAME'"] "I am to you but a name, a vague idea, a mysterious inspiration; sometimes a questionable guide, I fear. You don't even believe all I have told you about myself--you think it all a somnambulistic invention of your own; and so does your wife, and so does your friend.