rely different ways. Mrs. Ingmar was a woman who
centred all her interests in books and chiefly in the scientific forms
of occult research. She was no believer in anything outside the range
of what she called human experience. The evidences had convinced her of
nothing but a force as yet unclassified in the scientific categories and
all her interest lay in the undeveloped powers of brain which might be
discovered in the course of ignorant and credulous experiment. We met
therefore on the common ground of rejection of the so-called occultism
of the day, though I knew even then, and how infinitely better now, that
her constructions were wholly misleading.

Nearly all day she would lie in her chair under the deodars by the
delicate splash and ripple of the stream. Living imprisoned in the
crystal sphere of the intellect she saw the world outside, painted in
few but distinct colours, small, comprehensible, moving on a logical
orbit. I never knew her posed for an explanation. She had the contented
atheism of a certain type of French mind and found as much ease in it as
another kind of sweet woman does in her rosary and confessional.

"I cannot interest Brynhild," she said, when I knew her better. "She has
no affinity with science. She is simply a nature worshipper, and in such
places as this she seems to draw life from the inanimate life about her.
I have sometimes wondered whether she might not be developed into a kind
of bridge between the articulate and the inarticulate, so well does she
understand trees and flowers. Her father was like that--he had all sorts
of strange power with animals and plants, and thought he had more than
he had. He could never realize that the energy of nature is merely
mechanical."

"You think all energy is mechanical?"

"Certainly. We shall lay our finger on the mainspring one day and
the mystery will disappear. But as for Brynhild--I gave her the best
education possible and yet she has never understood the conception of a
universe moving on mathematical laws to which we must submit in body and
mind. She has the oddest ideas. I would not willingly say of a child of
mine that she is a mystic, and yet--"

She shook her head compassionately. But I scarcely heard. My eyes were
fixed on Brynhild, who stood apart, looking steadily out over the snows.
It was a glorious sunset, the west vibrating with gorgeous colour spilt
over in torrents that flooded the sky, Terrible splendours--hues for
which w