... And the point
of contact was Amy Nugent herself....
As regards his exact attitude to this girl it is more difficult to
write. On the one side the human element--those associations directly
connected with the senses--her actual face and hands, physical
atmosphere and surroundings--those had disappeared; they were
dispersed, or they lay underground; and it had been with a certain
shock of surprise, in spite of the explanations given to him, that he
had seen what he believed to be her face in the drawing-room in
Queen's Gate. But he had tried to arrange all this in his
imagination, and it had fallen into shape and proportion again. In
short, he thought he understood now that it is character which gives
unity to the transient qualities of a person on earth, and that, when
those qualities disappear, it is as unimportant as the wasting of
tissue: when, according to the spiritualists' gospel that character
manifests itself from the other side, it naturally reconstitutes the
form by which it had been recognized on earth.
Yet, in spite of this sense of familiarity with what he had seen,
there had fallen between Amy and himself that august shadow that is
called Death.
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