I can't tell you what happened next--it is rather dim to me, but I sate, or walked, or wandered, carrying the child--and it TALKED to me; yes, it talked in a little clear voice, though I can't remember anything it said; but I felt somehow as if it was telling me what might have been, and that I was getting to KNOW it somehow--does that seem strange? It seems like months and years that I was with it; and I feel now that I not only love it, but know it, all its thoughts, all its desires, all its faults--it had FAULTS, dearest; think of that--faults such as I have, and other faults as well. It was not quite content, but it was not unhappy; but it wasn't a dream-child at all, not like a little angel, but a perfectly real child. It laughed sometimes, and I can hear its little laughter now; it found fault with me, it wanted to go on--it cried sometimes, and nothing would please it; but it loved me and wanted to be with me; and I told it about you, and it not only listened, but asked me many times over to tell it more, about you, about me, about this place--I think it had other things in its mind, recollections, I thought, which it tried to tell me; so it went on. Once or twice I found myself here in bed--but I thought I was dying, and only wanted to lose myself and get back to the child--and then it all came to an end. There was a great staircase up which we went together; there was cloud at the top, but it seemed to me that there was life and movement behind it; there was no shadow behind the cloud, but light . . . and there was sound, musical sound. I went up with the child's hand clasped close in my own, but at the top he disengaged himself, and went in without a word to me or a sign, not as if he were leaving me, but as if his real life, and mine too, were within--just as a child would run into its home, if you came back with it from a walk, and as if it knew you were following, and there was no need of good-byes. I did not feel any sorrow at all then, either for the child or myself--I simply turned round and came down . . . and then I was back in my room again . . . and then it was you that I wanted." "That's all very wonderful," said Howard, musing, "wonderful and beautiful. . . . I wish I had seen that!"