to-day in any bodily form," was the sentence
he caught with his return to the actual present.

"A type of life?" he whispered, looking about him, as though to see who
it was had joined them; "you mean a--soul? Some kind of soul, alien to
humanity, or to--to any forms of living thing in the world to-day?" What
she had been saying reached him somehow, it seemed, though he had not
heard the words themselves. Still hesitating, he was yet so eager to
hear. Already he felt she meant to include him in her purposes, and that
in the end he must go willingly. So strong was her persuasion on his
mind.

And he felt as if he knew vaguely what was coming. Before she answered
his curious question--prompting it indeed--rose in his mind that strange
idea of the Group-Soul: the theory that big souls cannot express
themselves in a single individual, but need an entire group for their
full manifestation.

He listened intently. The reflection that this sudden intimacy was
unnatural, he rejected, for many conversations were really gathered
into one. Long watching and preparation on both sides had cleared the
way for the ripening of acquaintance into confidence--how long he dimly
wondered? But if this conception of the Group-Soul was not new, the
suggestion Lady Statham developed out of it was both new and
startling--and yet always so curiously familiar. Its value for him lay,
not in far-fetched evidence that supported it, but in the deep belief
which made it a vital asset in an honest inner life.

"An individual," she said quietly, "one soul expressed completely in a
single person, I mean, is exceedingly rare. Not often is a physical
instrument found perfect enough to provide it with adequate expression.
In the lower ranges of humanity--certainly in animal and insect
life--one soul is shared by many. Behind a tribe of savages stands one
Savage. A flock of birds is a single Bird, scattered through the
consciousness of all. They wheel in mid-air, they migrate, they obey the
deep intelligence called instinct--all as one. The life of any one lion
is the life of all--the lion group-soul that manifests itself in the
entire genus. An ant-heap is a single Ant; through the bees spreads the
consciousness of a single Bee."

Henriot knew what she was working up to. In his eagerness to hasten
disclosure he interrupted--

"And there may be types of life that have no corresponding bodily
expression at all, then?" he asked as though the question were