Together we went back to the hospital where Mary sat talking with Tom about the future life, about God and Christ and angels. She had many soldiers under her charge; but the other nurses worked a little harder to give her more time with Tom, for all the world loves a lover--especially in the horrors of war-time. “It isn’t that I do not want to believe,” he was saying to Mary, “it’s that I just can’t. If I could see with my own eyes an angel, or someone that I knew was dead, it would be different. But how could I see such a thing?” The Beautiful Being drew nearer, smiling, and waved its gauzy veil before the eyes of the dying man; but he could not see. The Beautiful Being wove a glamor of light around him, and sang as only angels can; but Tom could still neither see nor hear. “I think you will have to ‘materialize’,” the Beautiful Being said to me, with a whimsical smile. “Those eyes are stopped with matter, and cannot see anything finer than matter.” I was not attracted by the suggestion, but my incomprehensible friend followed it up. “In that bed yonder,” it said, “is one of those mortals who are called natural mediums, natural materializing mediums, because their tenuous bodies are so loosely held by the physical that they are easily detached and borrowed from. Now materialize yourself and let Tom see something which he will take for an angel.” “I am no angel,” I said, “and the eyes of a dying atheist would never mistake me for one.” “Try it, and see,” said the Beautiful Being, pointing to a man in a neighboring bed, who was the “medium” in question. I looked at the man and read around him the story of his life. He was a coarse fellow, a saloon-keeper, and another familiar compound-word would have fitted him like a glove. “Clothe myself in that man’s etheric body!” I said in disgust. “I would not touch him with a ten-foot pole!” “How dainty-fingered you are!” said the Beautiful Being. “Did I not know you so well, I could almost believe you self-righteous.” “Call me what you like,” I replied, “but I will not do phenomena with that body.” The Beautiful Being laughed. “It would be so easy,” it said, as if to itself, “so easy and so convincing.” The angel moved toward the sleeping saloon-keeper (I had almost written the harsher compound), and gradually from his side there issued a vaporous stream. From force of earthly habit I rubbed my eyes, for I could not believe that I saw aright. The pure and exquisite angel was clothing itself in the unhealthy emanations of the sleeping medium, and in the space of twenty ticks of the clock on the wall it passed, fully materialized, with a speaking throat, to the foot of Tom’s bed. He sat up, in the surprise and shock of the vision. “What are you?” he asked, hoarsely.