Olivia Howard Dunbar

“ I had so long now lived invisibly with them, he knew that she was right.
“I suppose you know what it means?” she asked him, calmly.
“Dear Theresa,” Allan said, slowly, “if you and I should go away somewhere, could we not evade all this ghostliness? And will you come with me?”
“Distance would not banish her,” my sister confidently asserted. And then she said, softly: “Have you thought what a lonely, awesome thing it must be to be so newly dead? Pity her, Allan. We who are warm and alive should pity her. ”

“ Allan cried. “You know that you cannot, now that she has asked you to stay.”
“Then you believe, as I do, that it was she?” Theresa demanded.
“I can never understand, but I know,” he answered her. “And now you will not go?”
I am freed. There will be no further semblance of me in my old home, no sound of my voice, no dimmest echo of my earthly self. They have no further need of me, the two that I have brought together. Theirs is the fullest joy that the dwellers in the shell of sense can know. Mine is the transcendent joy of the unseen spaces. ”

“ She finished the last one as I watched her, and added it to the heap of black-bordered envelopes that lay on the desk. Poor girl! I saw now that they had cost her tears. Yet, living beside her day after day, year after year, I had never discovered what deep tenderness my sister possessed. Toward each other it had been our habit to display only a temperate affection, and I remember having always thought it distinctly fortunate for Theresa, since she was denied my happiness, that she could live so easily and pleasantly without emotions of the devastating sort.... ”

“ Theresa told him, and he sat down to wait for her.
No spirit still unreleased can understand the pang that I felt with Allan sitting almost within my touch. Almost irresistibly the wish beset me to let him for an instant feel my nearness. Then I checked myself, remembering—oh, absurd, piteous human fears!—that my too unguarded closeness might alarm him. ”

“ The windows were closed too tightly; for I had always kept the house very cool, although I had known that Theresa preferred warm rooms. And my work-basket was in disorder; it was preposterous that so small a thing should hurt me so. Then, for this was my first experience of the shadow-folded transition, the odd alteration of my emotions bewildered me. For at one moment the place seemed so humanly familiar, so distinctly my own proper envelope, that for love of it I could have laid my cheek against the wall ”

“ Can there be too many windows open? There is such a—chill—about.”
“There are no windows open,” Theresa assured him. “I took care to shut out the chill. You are not well, Allan!”
“Perhaps not.” He embraced the suggestion. “And yet I feel no illness apart from this abominable sensation that persists—persists.... Theresa, you must tell me: do I fancy it, or do you, too, feel—something—strange here?”
“Oh, there is something very strange here,” she half sobbed. “There always will be.” ”

“ It was that wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems infinitely greater—a moment when anything can happen, anything be believed in. To me, watching, listening, hovering, there came a dreadful purpose and a dreadful courage. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1953, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”