forced
out of him. "They exist as Powers--unmanifested on the earth to-day?"

"Powers," she answered, watching him closely with unswerving stare,
"that need a group to provide their body--their physical expression--if
they came back."

"Came back!" he repeated below his breath.

But she heard him. "They once had expression. Egypt, Atlantis knew
them--spiritual Powers that never visit the world to-day."

"Bodies," he whispered softly, "actual bodies?"

"Their sphere of action, you see, would be their body. And it might be
physical outline. So potent a descent of spiritual life would select
materials for its body where it could find them. Our conventional notion
of a body--what is it? A single outline moving altogether in one
direction. For little human souls, or fragments, this is sufficient. But
for vaster types of soul an entire host would be required."

"A church?" he ventured. "Some Body of belief, you surely mean?"

She bowed her head a moment in assent. She was determined he should
seize her meaning fully.

"A wave of spiritual awakening--a descent of spiritual life upon a
nation," she answered slowly, "forms itself a church, and the body of
true believers are its sphere of action. They are literally its bodily
expression. Each individual believer is a corpuscle in that Body. The
Power has provided itself with a vehicle of manifestation. Otherwise we
could not know it. And the more real the belief of each individual, the
more perfect the expression of the spiritual life behind them all. A
Group-soul walks the earth. Moreover, a nation naturally devout could
attract a type of soul unknown to a nation that denies all faith. Faith
brings back the gods.... But to-day belief is dead, and Deity has left
the world."

She talked on and on, developing this main idea that in days of older
faiths there were deific types of life upon the earth, evoked by worship
and beneficial to humanity. They had long ago withdrawn because the
worship which brought them down had died the death. The world had grown
pettier. These vast centres of Spiritual Power found no "Body" in which
they now could express themselves or manifest.... Her thoughts and
phrases poured over him like sand. It was always sand he felt--burying
the Present and uncovering the Past....

He tried to steady his mind upon familiar objects, but wherever he
looked Sand stared him in the face. Outside these trivial walls the
Desert lay listening. It lay waiting