I saw her face but she listened as well as saw, and her expression changed as it changes when the pomp of a great orchestra breaks upon the silence. It flashed to the chords of blood-red and gold that was burning fire. It softened through the fugue of woven crimson gold and flame, to the melancholy minor of ashes-of-roses and paling green, and so through all the dying glories that faded slowly to a tranquil grey and left the world to the silver melody of one sole star that dawned above the ineffable heights of the snows. Then she listened as a child does to a bird, entranced, with a smile like a butterfly on her parted lips. I never saw such a power of quiet.

She and I were walking next day among the forest ways, the pine-scented sunshine dappling the dropped frondage. We had been speaking of her mother. "It is such a misfortune for her," she said thoughtfully, "that I am not clever. She should have had a daughter who could have shared her thoughts. She analyses everything, reasons about everything, and that is quite out of my reach."

She moved beside me with her wonderful light step—the poise and balance of a nymph in the Parthenon frieze.

"How do you see things?"

"See? That is the right word. I see things—I never reason about them. They are. For her they move like figures in a sum. For me every one of them is a window through which one may look to what is beyond."

"To where?"

"To what they really are—not what they seem."

I looked at her with interest.

"Did you ever hear of the double vision?"

For this is a subject on which the spiritually learned men of India, like the great mystics of all the faiths, have much to say. I had listened with bewilderment and doubt to the expositions of my Pandit on this very head. Her simple words seemed for a moment the echo of his deep and searching thought. Yet it surely could not be. Impossible.

"Never. What does it mean?" She raised clear unveiled eyes. "You must forgive me for being so stupid, but it is my mother who is at home with all these scientific phrases. I know none of them."

"It means that for some people the material universe—the things we see with our eyes—is only a mirage, or say, a symbol, which either hides or shadows forth the eternal truth. And in that sense they see things as they really are, not as they seem to the rest of us. And whether this is the statement of a truth or the wildest of dreams, I cannot tell."

She did not answer for a moment; then said;

"Are there people who believe this—know it?"

"Certainly. There are people who believe that thought is the only real thing—that the whole universe is thought made visible. That we create with our thoughts the very body by which we shall re-act on the universe in lives to be.

"Do you believe it?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

She paused; looked at me, and then went on:

"You see, I don't think things out. I only feel. But this cannot interest you."

I felt she was eluding the question. She began to interest me more than any one I had ever known. She had extraordinary power of a sort. Once, in the woods, where I was reading in so deep a shade that she never saw me, I had an amazing vision of her. She stood in a glade with the sunlight and shade about her; she had no hat and a sunbeam turned her hair to pale bronze. A small bright April shower was falling through the sun, and she stood in pure light that reflected itself in every leaf and grass-blade. But it was nothing of all this that arrested me, beautiful as it was. She stood as though life were for the moment suspended;—then, very softly, she made a low musical sound, infinitely wooing, from scarcely parted lips, and instantly I saw a bird of azure plumage flutter down and settle on her shoulder, pluming himself there in happy security. Again she called softly and another followed the first. Two flew to her feet, two more to her breast and hand. They caressed her, clung to her, drew some joyous influence from her presence. She stood in the glittering rain like Spring with her birds about her—a wonderful sight. Then, raising one hand gently with the fingers thrown back she uttered a different note, perfectly sweet and intimate, and the branches parted and a young deer with full bright eyes fixed on her advanced and pushed a soft muzzle into her hand.

In my astonishment I moved, however slightly, and the picture broke up. The deer sprang back into the trees, the birds fluttered up in a hurry of feathers, and she turned calm eyes upon me, as unstartled as if she had known all the time that I was there.

"You should not have breathed," she said smiling. "They must have utter quiet."

I rose up and joined her.

"It is a marvel. I can scarcely believe my eyes. How do you do it?"

"My father taught me. They come. How can I tell?"

She turned away and left me. I thought long over this episode. I recalled words heard in the place of my studies—words I had dismissed without any care at the moment. "To those who see, nothing is alien. They move in the same vibration with all that has life, be it in bird or flower. And in the Uttermost also, for all things are One. For such there is no death."

That was beyond me still, but I watched her with profound interest. She recalled also words I had half forgotten—