"No
doubt Maud has told you all about her strange experience? She has
described it to me, and I don't know what to say or think. She was
wonderfully fine about it. She said she would not mention it again, and
she did not desire me to talk about it--or even believe it! And I don't
know what to do. It isn't the sort of thing that I believe in, though I
think it beautiful, just because it was Maud who felt it. But I can't
say what I really believe about it, without seeming unsympathetic and
even rough; and yet I don't like there being anything which means so
much to her, which doesn't mean much to me."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "I foresaw that difficulty, but I think Maud
did right to tell you."

"Of course, of course," said Howard, "but I mean much more than that.
Is there something really THERE, open to all, possible to all, from
which I am shut out by what the Bible calls my hardness of heart? Do
you really think yourself that a living spirit drew near and made
itself known to Maud thus? or is it a beautiful dream, a sort of
subjective attempt at finding comfort, an instinctive effort of the
mind towards saving itself from sorrow?"

"Ah," said Mrs. Graves, "who shall say? Of course I do not see any real
objection to the former, when I think of all the love and the emotion
that went to the calling of the little spirit from the deeps of life;
but then I am a woman, and an old woman. If I were a man of your age
who had lived an intellectual life, I should feel very much as you do."

"But if you believe it," said Howard, "can you give me reasons why you
believe it? I am not unreasonable at all. I hate the attitude of mind
of denying the truth of the experience of others, just because one has
not felt it oneself. Here, it seems to me, there are two explanations,
and my scepticism inclines to what is, I suppose, the materialistic
one. I am very suspicious of experiences which one is told to take on
trust, and which can't be intellectually expressed. It's the sort of
theory that the clergy fall back upon, what they call spiritual truth,
which seems to me merely unchecked, unverifiable experience. I don't,
to take a crude instance, believe in statues that wink; and yet the
tendency of the priest is to say that it is a matter of childlike
faith; yet to me credulity appears to be one of the worst of sins. It
is incredulity which has disposed of superstition."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves. "I fully agree with you about that; and