“Miss Page, I had the great pleasure of meeting your brother at the Congress in Chicago. He made a splendid address at the opening.”

Virginia was greatly pleased. “Rollin is splendid. We are so proud of him.”

Mr. Stanton was silent, but he seemed to be under some deep thought, and as the others had begun to talk about various matters, he suddenly said to Virginia, “Miss Page, I had the most remarkable experience as I came up here from the station. I sent my baggage to the hotel, as Mr. Maxwell directed me to do, and I walked here. On the way, a most astonishing gleam of light shot up across the sky and seemed to open and shut like a great white blossom. I wonder if you or any others have seen anything like it tonight.”

Mr. Maxwell was near enough to hear a part of what Stanton said. He turned around eagerly and exclaimed, “Can you describe it, Mr. Stanton?”

“No, I have never seen anything with which to compare it. It looked to me like a magnificent blossom, spreading out the softest white petals in a breadth and beauty I have never imagined possible. It was not like the aurora borealis, which I have seen in its glory in the north while with Missionary Landis at Hudson Bay. I was awed and at the same time strangely excited. I have never had such a feeling in all my life.”

Stanton’s voice was resonant and pleasantly penetrating, and without meaning to address any one but Virginia and Maxwell, before he had finished speaking, every other person in the room had stopped talking and turned to listen.

Mr. Maxwell leaned forward and laid a trembling hand on his new assistant’s arm. “Did you notice other people at the time and the effect of the light on them?”

“That was one of the most bewildering things about it. I was so excited by what I saw that I could not help exclaiming to a man I met, ‘Isn’t that great?’ and pointing up at it. But he looked up and replied, ‘I don’t see anything,’ and passed on.”

Virginia, Rachel, and Felicia looked at one another as Stanton continued. “Have you people seen anything like this that I do not know how to adequately describe?”

“We have all seen it,” replied Mr. Maxwell. And at that a silence fell over the company which no one wished to break.

Stanton looked gravely from one to another. The silence deepened. Out on the street the noises of the city could be heard, people passing on the sidewalk, the rumble of the streetcars, the passing of carriages and automobiles. It seemed to the little company in the room that something out in the great world was portending, that they stood on the threshold of stupendous movements, but all undefined and shadowy, without a hint yet of what was to be, except as their troubled and excited hearts spoke of bewildering events which they thought had not occurred to humans for centuries.