hitherto she
had only looked as through clouded glass. This was very strange, and yet
it was familiar, too; she had arrived, it seemed, at a centre, round the
circumference of which she had been circling all her life; and it was
more than a mere point: it was a distinct space, walled and enclosed....
At the same instant she knew that hearing, too, was gone....

Then an amazing thing happened--yet it appeared to her that she had
always known it would happen, although her mind had never articulated
it. This is what happened.

The enclosure melted, with a sound of breaking, and a limitless space
was about her--limitless, different to everything else, and alive, and
astir. It was alive, as a breathing, panting body is alive--self-evident
and overpowering--it was one, yet it was many; it was immaterial, yet
absolutely real--real in a sense in which she never dreamed of
reality....

Yet even this was familiar, as a place often visited in dreams is
familiar; and then, without warning, something resembling sound or
light, something which she knew in an instant to be unique, tore across
it....

* * * * *

Then she saw, and understood....

CHAPTER V

I

Oliver had passed the days since Mabel's disappearance in an
indescribable horror. He had done all that was possible: he had traced
her to the station and to Victoria, where he lost her clue; he had
communicated with the police, and the official answer, telling him
nothing, had arrived to the effect that there was no news: and it was
not until the Tuesday following her disappearance that Mr. Francis,
hearing by chance of his trouble, informed him by telephone that he had
spoken with her on the Friday night. But there was no satisfaction to be
got from him--indeed, the news was bad rather than good, for Oliver
could not but be dismayed at the report of the conversation, in spite of
Mr. Francis's assurances that Mrs. Brand had shown no kind of
inclination to defend the Christian cause.

Two theories gradually emerged, in his mind; either she was gone to the
protection of some unknown Catholic, or--and he grew sick at the
thought--she had applied somewhere for Euthanasia as she had once
threatened, and was now under the care of the Law; such an event was
sufficiently common since the passing of the Release Act in 1998. And it
was frightful that he could not condemn it.

* * * * *

On the Tuesday evening, as he sat heavily in his room, for the hundredth
tim