done well for himself this time! His questioner was plainly
satisfied with the name Mary. Perhaps lying gets easier as you go on.
He hoped so.

"My mother's name was Mary," said Desire. "It is a lovely name."

Spence felt very proud of himself. Not only had he produced a lovely
name in the space of three seconds and a half, but he had also provided
a not-to-be-missed opportunity of changing the subject.

"I suppose you do not remember your mother," he said tentatively.

"Oh yes, I do, although I was quite small when she died. Father says I
fancy some of the things I remember. Perhaps I do. I always dream very
vividly. And fact and dream are easily confused in a child's mind. My
most distinct memories are detached, like pictures, without any before
or after to explain them. There is one, for instance, about waking up
in the woods at night, wrapped in my mother's shawl and seeing her
face, all frightened and white, with the moon, like a great, silver
eye, shining through the trees. But I can't imagine why my mother would
be hiding in the woods at night."

"Why hiding?"

"There is a sense of hiding that comes with the memory--without
anything to account for it But, although I do not remember connected
incidents very well, I remember her--the feeling of having her with me.
And the terrible emptiness afterwards. If she had gone quite away, all
at once, I couldn't have borne it."

"Do you mean that she had a long illness?" asked Spence, greatly
interested.

"No. She died suddenly. It was just--you will call it silly
imagination--" she broke off uncertainly.

"I might call it imagination without the adjective."

"Yes. But it wasn't. It was real. The sense, I mean, that she hadn't
gone away. Nothing that wasn't real would have been of the slightest
use."

"It all depends on how we define reality. What seems real at one time
may seem unreal at another."

She nodded.

"That is just what has happened. I am not sure, now. The sense of
nearness left me as I grew up. But at that time, I lived by it. Do you
find the idea absurd?"

"Why should I? Our knowledge of our own consciousness is the absurdity.
All we know is that our normal waking consciousness is only one special
type. Around it lie potential forms of consciousness entirely
different, and quite as real. Sometimes we, or it, or they, break
through. I am paraphrasing James. Do you know James?"

"I have read 'Daisy Miller.'"

"This James was the Daisy Mille