The Shipwrecked Life

"There is no one," she remarked, coming back into the room.

"Could I have been so mistaken?"

Mr. Delancy looked bewildered.

Seeing that the impression was so strong on his mind, Miss Carman
went out into the hall, and glanced from there into the parlor and
dining-room.

"No one came in, Mr. Delancy," she said, on returning to the
library.

"A mere impression," remarked the old man, soberly. "Well, these
impressions are often very singular. My face was partly turned to
the window, so that I saw out, but not so distinctly as if both eyes
had been in the range of vision. The form of a woman came to my
sight as distinctly as if the presence had been real--the form of a
woman going swiftly past the window."

"Did you recognize the form?"

It was some time before Mr. Delancy replied.

"Yes." He looked anxious.

"You thought of Irene?"

"I did."

"We have talked and thought of Irene so much to-day," said Rose,
"that your thought of her has made you present to her mind with more
than usual distinctness. Her thought of you has been more intent in
consequence, and this has drawn her nearer. You saw her by an
inward, not by an outward, vision. She is now present with you in
spirit, though her body be many miles distant. These things often
happen. They startle us by their strangeness, but are as much
dependent on laws of the mind as bodily nearness is dependent on the
laws of matter."