CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MIRACLE.
It was a glorious night. It was full moon. The park was flooded with a clear soft light and that stillness reigned that so often comes with moonlight.
It was Sunday, and nearly time for evening church.
I had been out and instead of going home I wandered in and out among the deep shadows of the trees in the avenue drawing in the beauty of it all.
No one was about. I had the park to myself.
Sitting there on a seat well out in the open, I looked up at the sky.
There were only a few clouds and the moon shone unhidden.
I looked and looked and my eyes found their way to my one particular bright star.
The church bells were still ringing. Near at hand and further and fainter their different bells with their different notes and different sounds, losing themselves in the distance.
And then they stopped and a wonderful stillness fell over all.
And then the Miracle.
I looked up at the Heavens and my spirit seemed to float farther and farther away right up among the stars, and stay there for a long long pause.
The whole sky seemed to listen to the silence.
And then, out of the stillness, came a little gentle voice, full of wistful pathos.
"Oh, Tina Malone! Don't you know yet who it is? Oh, Tina Malone! We are together at last. Don't you know that our spirits have met and that it is through the things of the Occult World?"
The little voice had the silence all to itself.
I looked up and held myself still to listen.
"Don't you know yet who it is?"
"Is it Tony?" I asked the question with a feeling of dread on me that if I did not guess right the whole thing would go and I would sink back into the ordinary grey of commonplace.
"Can't you guess?"
I stood still and looked up into that vast misty blue all dotted with stars, afraid to speak that I might spoil the beauty of it all.
So still! So wonderful! With that little wistful voice.
"Oh, Tina Malone! I have this power and it all concentres on you. Won't you take it? What will you do with it?"
