Athalie

"I am still dazed by it. I suppose the sharper grief will come when this dull, unreal sense of stupefaction wears away.

"We were very close together, my father and I. Oh, but we might have been closer, Athalie! – I might have been with him oftener, seen more of him, spent less time away from him.

"I did try to be a good son. I could have been far better. It's a bitter thing to realise at such a time.

"And I had so much to say to him. I cannot understand that I can never say it now… Athalie dear, my mother wishes me to take her abroad. I made arrangements yesterday at the Cunard office. We sail Saturday. Could I see you for a moment before I go?

    "Clive."

To which she replied:

"I shall be here every evening."

He came Friday night looking very sallow and thin in his black clothes. Catharine, who was sewing by the centre table, rose to shake hands with him in sympathetic silence, then went away to her bedroom, where, once or twice she caught herself whistling some gay refrain of the moment, and was obliged to check herself.

He had taken Athalie's slender hands and was standing by the sofa, looking intently at her.

"That night," he said with an effort, "you sent me home – saying that I was needed."

"Yes, Clive."

"How did you know?"

"I knew."

"Did you see – anything?"

"Yes, dear," she said under her breath.

"Did you see him?"

"Yes."

"Tell me," he said, but his lips scarcely moved to form the words he uttered.

"I recognised him at once. I had never forgotten him… It is difficult to explain how I knew that he was not – what we call living."

"But you knew?"

"Yes," she said gently.

"He – did he speak?" The young fellow turned away with a brusque, hopeless gesture.

"God," he muttered – "and I couldn't either see or hear him!"

"He did not speak, Clive." The boy looked up at her, his haggard features working.

She said: "When I first noticed him he was looking at you. Then he caught my eye. Clive – it was this time as it had been before – when I was twelve years old – his expression became so sweet and winning – like yours when I amuse you – and you laugh at me but – like me – "

"Oh, Athalie – I can't seem to endure it! I – I can't be reconciled – " His head fell forward; she put her arms around him and drew his face against her breast.

"I know," she whispered. "I also have passed that way."

After a few moments he lifted his head, looked around, almost fearfully.

"Where was it that he stood, Athalie?"

She hesitated, then took one of his hands in hers and he followed her until she stopped between the sofa and the fireplace.

"Here?"

"Yes, Clive."

"So near!" he said aloud to himself. "Couldn't he have spoken to me? – just one word – "

"Dearest – dearest!"

"God knows why you should see him and I shouldn't! I don't understand – when I was his son – "

"I do not understand either, Clive."

He seemed not to hear her, standing there with blank gaze shifting from object to object in the room. "I don't understand," he kept repeating in a dull, almost querulous voice, – "I don't understand why." And her heart responded in a passion of tenderness and grief. But she found no further words to say to him, no explanation that might comfort him.

"Will he ever come here – anywhere – again?" he asked suddenly.

"Oh, Clive, I don't know."

"Don't you know? Couldn't you find out?"

"How? I don't know how to find out. I never try to inquire."

"Isn't there some way?"

"I don't really know, Clive. How could I know?"

"But when you see such people – shadows – shapes – "

"Yes… They are not shadows."

"Do they seem real?"

"Why, yes; as real as you are."

"Athalie, how can they be?"

"They are to me. There is nothing ghostly about them."

For a moment it almost seemed to her as though he resented her clear seeing; then he said: "Have you always been able to see – this way?"