Kate's great dog was lying between us on the rug. I remember that
evening so well; we could see the stars through the window plainer and
plainer as the fire went down, and we could hear the noise of the sea.

"Do you remember in the old myth of Demeter and Persephone," Kate asked
me, "where Demeter takes care of the child and gives it ambrosia and
hides it in fire, because she loves it and wishes to make it immortal,
and to give it eternal youth; and then the mother finds it out and cries
in terror to hinder her, and the goddess angrily throws the child down
and rushes away? And he had to share the common destiny of mankind,
though he always had some wonderful inscrutable grace and wisdom,
because a goddess had loved him and held him in her arms. I always
thought that part of the story beautiful where Demeter throws off her
disguise and is no longer an old woman, and the great house is filled
with brightness like lightning, and she rushes out through the halls
with her yellow hair waving over her shoulders, and the people would
give anything to bring her back again, and to undo their mistake. I knew
it almost all by heart once," said Kate, "and I am always finding a new
meaning in it. I was just thinking that it may be that we all have given
to us more or less of another nature, as the child had whom Demeter
wished to make like the gods. I believe old Captain Sands is right, and
we have these instincts which defy all our wisdom and for which we never
can frame any laws. We may laugh at them, but we are always meeting
them, and one cannot help knowing that it has been the same through all
history. They are powers which are imperfectly developed in this life,
but one cannot help the thought that the mystery of this world may be
the commonplace of the next."

"I wonder," said I, "why it is that one hears so much more of such
things from simple country people. They believe in dreams, and they have