quite unaccustomed to children, she insisted upon dogging that
functionary's footsteps. Therefore, Morris saw little of her.

It was one o'clock on Christmas morning, or more. Hours ago Morris had
gone though his rites, the ritual that he had invented or discovered--in
its essence, simple and pathetic enough--whereby he strove to bring
himself to the notice of the dead, and to fit himself to see or hear the
dead. Such tentative mysticism as served his turn need not be written
down, but its substance can be imagined by many. Then, through an
exercise of his will, he had invoked the strange, trance-like state
which has been described. The soft waves flowing from an unknown source
had beat upon his brain, and with them came the accustomed phenomena;
the sense of some presence near, impending, yet impotent; suggesting
by analogy and effect the misdirected efforts of a blind person seeking
something in a room, or the painful attempt of one almost deaf, striving
to sift out words from a confused murmur of sounds. The personality
of Stella seemed to pervade him, yet he could see nothing, could hear
nothing. The impression might be from within, not from without. Perhaps,
after all, it was nothing but a dream, a miasma, a mirage, drawn by his
own burning thought from the wastes and marshes of his mind peopled
with illusive hopes and waterlogged by memories. Or it might be true and
real; as yet he could not be certain of its origin.

The fit passed, delightful in its overpowering emptiness, but
unsatisfying as all that had gone before it, and left him weak. For a
while Morris crouched by the fire, for he had grown cold, and could
not think accurately. Then his vital, human strength returned, and, as
seemed to him to be fitting upon this night of all nights, he began one
by one to recall the events of that day four years ago, when Stella was
still a living woman.

The scene in the Dead Church, the agonies of farewell; he summoned
them detail by detail, word by word; her looks, the changes of her
expression, the movements of her hands and eyes and lips; he counted and
pictured each precious souvenir. The sound of her last sentences also,
as the blind, senseless aerophone had rendered them just before the
end, one by one they were repeated in his brain. There stood the very
instrument; but, alas! it was silent now, its twin lay buried in the sea
with her who had worked it.

Morris grew weary, the effort of memory was exhausti