a looked at him again. "I would not be you," she said gravely. "I
can do nothing, perhaps, and I am sure I know nothing worth knowing, but
I hope. I have that at least. I hope everything, with all my heart and
soul--everything, even things you could not dream of."

"Help me to dream of them. Perhaps I might."

"Then dream that faith is knowledge, that charity is action, and that
hope is heaven itself," answered Cecilia.

Her voice was sweet and low, and far away as spirit land, and Guido
wondered at the words.

"Where did you hear that?" he asked.

"Ah, where?" she asked, almost sadly, and very longingly. "If I could
tell you that, I should know the great secret, the only secret ever yet
worth knowing. Where have we heard the voices that come back to us, not
in sleeping dreams only, but when we are waking, too, voices that come
back softly like evening bells across the sea, with the touch of hands
that lay in ours long ago, and faces that we know better than our own!
Where was it all, before the memory of it all was here?"

"I have often wondered whether those impressions are memories," said
Guido.

"What else could they be?" Cecilia asked, her tone growing colder at
once.

Guido had been happy in listening to her talk, with its suggestion of
fantastical extravagance, but he had not known how to answer her, nor
how to lead her on. He felt that the spell was broken, because something
was lacking in himself. To be a magician one must believe in magic,
unless one would be a mere conjurer. Guido at least knew enough not to
answer the girl's last question with a string of so-called scientific
theories about atavism and transmitted recollections. If he had taken
that ground he would have been surprised to find that Cecilia Palladio
was quite as familiar with it as himself.

"I am afraid," he said, "that I am not fit to talk with you about such
things. You start from a point which I can never hope to reach, and
instead of coming down to me, you rise higher and higher, almost out of
my sight. I am afraid that if our friendship is to be real, it will be a
one-sided bond."

"How do you mean?" asked the young girl, who had listened.

"It will mean much more to me than it ever can to you."

"No," Cecilia answered. "I think I shall like you very much."

"I like you very much already," said Guido, smiling. "I have an amusing
idea."

"Have you? What is it? Neither of us has been very amusing this
evening."

"Suppos