Chapter 31 - Page 2

man encountered an experience
which so absorbed him. He was a student of the advanced order. He also
had seen the books which had fallen into the hands of Coombe--some the
work of scientific men--some the purely commercial outcome of the need
of the hour written by the jackals of the literary profession. He would
have been ready to sit by the bedside of his patient through the night
watching over her sleep, holding her wrist with fingers on her pulse.
Even his most advanced thinking involuntarily harked back to pulse and
temperature and blood pressure. The rapidity of the change taking place
in the girl was abnormal, but it expressed itself physically as well as
mentally. How closely involved physiology and psychology were after all!
Which was which? Where did one end and the other begin? Where was the
line drawn? Was there a line at all? He had seen no chances for the
apparently almost dying young thing when he first met her. She could not
have lived through what lay before her. She had had a dream which she
believed was real, and, through the pure joy and comfort of it, the life
forces had begun to flow through her being and combine to build actual
firm tissue and supply blood cells. The results were physical enough.
The inexplicable in this case was that the curative agency was that she
believed that her husband, who had been blown to atoms on the battle
field, came to her alive each night--talked with her--held her in warm
arms. Nothing else had aided her. And there you were--thrown upon
occultism and what not!

He became conscious that, though he would have been glad to question
Dowie daily and closely, a certain reluctance of mind held him back.
Also he realised that, being a primitive though excellent woman, Dowie
herself was secretly awed into avoidance of the subject. He believed
that she knelt by her bedside each night in actual fear, but faithfully
praying that for some months at least the dream might be allowed to go
on. Had not he himself involuntarily said,

"She is marvellously well. We have nothing to fear if this continues."

It did continue and her bloom became a thing to marvel at. And not her
bloom alone. Her strength increased with her blooming until no one could
have felt fear for or doubt of her. She walked upon the moor without
fatigue, she even worked in a garden Jock Macaur had laid out for her
inside the ruined walls of what had once been the castle's banquet hall.
So much of her life had been spent in London that wild moor and sky and
the growing of things thrilled her. She ran in and out and to and fro
like a little girl. There seemed no limit to the young vigour that
appeared day by day to increase rather than diminish.

"It's a wonderful thing and