re else could she be?" replied Ida.

"Oh, there is no lack of room for her," said Paul; "the universe is big
enough for all the souls that ever lived in it. Suppose, now, you
believed her to be still alive as a spirit, just as she was, still alive
somewhere in the land of spirits, not transformed into the young lady
that you are at all, you understand, for that would only be another way
of saying that she was dead, but just as she was, a child, with a child's
loves, a child's thoughts, a child's feelings, and a child's face--can
you suppose such a thing, just as an effort of imagination?"

"Oh, yes!" said Ida; "I can suppose that."

"Well, then," said Paul, "suppose also that you remembered this little
girl very tenderly, and longed to look on her face again, although
knowing that she was a spirit now. Suppose that you went to a woman
having a mysterious power to call up the spirits of the departed, and
suppose that she called up the spirit of this child-self of yours, and
that you recognized it, and suppose that just at that moment the woman
died, and her earthly life was transferred to the spirit of the child, so
that instead of being a spirit, she became again a living child, but
unable to recognize you who loved her so well, because when she lived on
earth, you, of course, had not yet come into existence. Suppose you
brought this child home with you----"

"What do you mean?" interrupted Ida, with dilating eyes. "Am I----"

"You are to that woman," broke in Paul, indicating Miss Ludington, "what
the child would have been to you. You are bound to her by the same tie by
which that little girl would have been bound to you. She remembers and
loves you as you would remember and love that child; but you do not know
her any more than that child would know you. You both share the name of
Ida Ludington, according to the usage of men as to names; but I think
there is no danger of your being confounded with each other, either in
your own eyes or those of lookers-on."

Ida had at last comprehended. The piercing look, expressive of mingled
attraction and repulsion, which she fixed upon Miss Ludington, left no
doubt of that. It implied alarm, mistrust, and something that was almost
defiance, yet with hints of a possible tenderness.

It was such a look as a daughter, stolen from her cradle and grown to
maidenhood among strangers, might fix upon the woman claiming to be her
mother, except that not only was Miss Ludington a str