he boy._

Do whatever she tells you.

_The boy follows Martha out. Michaelis stands by the window in
thought. As Rhoda reenters, he looks up. He speaks significantly,
with suppressed excitement._

She saw the sun!

RHODA.

Poor dear Auntie!

MICHAELIS.

You pity her?

RHODA.

_After an instant's silence, during which she ponders her reply._

I think I envy her.

_She removes the cloth from the table, and begins deftly to put the
room in order. Michaelis watches her with a kind of vague
intentness._

MICHAELIS.

How long did you say she had been sick?

RHODA.

More than four years--nearly five.

MICHAELIS.

She has never walked in that time?

RHODA.

_Shakes her head._

Nor used her right hand, either.

MICHAELIS.

_With intensity._

Are you certain?

RHODA.

_Surprised at his tone._

Yes--I haven't lived here long, but I am certain.

MICHAELIS.

She has tried medicine, doctors?

RHODA.

Uncle has spent everything he could earn on them. She has been three
times to the mineral baths, once as far as Virginia.

MICHAELIS.

But never as far as Bethesda.

RHODA.

Bethesda? Where is that?

MICHAELIS.

The pool, which is called Bethesda, having five porches.

RHODA.

Oh, yes. The pool in the Bible, where once a year an angel troubled the
waters, and the sick and the lame and the blind gathered, hoping to be
healed.

MICHAELIS.

And whoever first, after the troubling of the waters, stepped in, he
was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

RHODA.

If anybody could find the way there again, it would be Aunt Mary.

_Pause._

And if anybody could show her the way it would be--you.

_She goes on in a different tone, as if to escape from the
embarrassment of her last speech._

Her saying just now she saw the sun. She often says things like that.
Have you noticed?

MICHAELIS.

Yes.

RHODA.

_With hesitation._

Her brother Seth--the one who died--has she told you about him?

MICHAELIS.

Yes.

RHODA.

What she thinks happens--since--he died?

_Michaelis nods assent._

And yet in most other ways her mind is perfectly clear.

MICHAELIS.

Perhaps in this way it is clearer still.

RHODA.

_Startled._

You mean--that maybe she really does--_see_ her brother?

MICHAELIS.

It may be.

RHODA.

It would make the world a very different--a very strange place, if that
_were_ true