He had plunged far down into the sea of lives, into the clear warm still sea of Natalie's life, into the heavy salt dead sea of his wife's life, into the swiftly running young river of life that was in his daughter Jane.

"I'm a great little mixer-up of figures of speech, but at the same time I'm a great little swimmer in seas," he said aloud to his daughter.

Well, he had better be a little careful too. Her eyes were becoming puzzled again. It would take a long time for one, living with another, to become used to the sight of things jerked suddenly up out of the wells of thought within oneself and he and his daughter would perhaps never live together again.

He looked at the little stone held so firmly between his thumb and finger. It would be better to keep his mind fastened upon that now. It was a small, a minute thing, but one could fancy it looming large on the surface of a calm sea. His daughter's life was a river running down to the sea of life. She would want something to which she could cling when she had been cast out into the sea. What an absurd notion. A little green stone would not float in the sea. It would sink. He smiled knowingly.

There was the little stone held before him, in his extended hand. He had picked it up on a railroad track one day and had indulged in fancies concerning it and the fancies had healed him. By indulging in fancies concerning inanimate objects, one in a strange way glorified them. For example a man might go to live in a room. There was a picture in a frame on a wall, the walls of a room, an old desk, two candles under a Virgin, and a man's fancy made the place a sacred place. All the art of life perhaps consisted in just letting the fancy wash over and colour the facts of life.

The light from the two candles under the Virgin fell on the stone he held before him. It was about the size and shape of a small bean and was dark green in colour. In certain lights its colour changed swiftly. There was a flash of yellow green as of new-grown things just coming out of the ground and then that faded away and the stone became altogether a dark lusty green, as of the leaves of oak trees in the late summer, one could fancy.

How clearly John Webster had remembered everything now. The stone he had found on the railroad track had been lost by a woman who was travelling west. The woman had worn it among other stones in a brooch at her throat. He remembered how his imagination had created her at the moment.

Or had it been set in a ring and worn on her finger?

Things were a bit mixed. Now he saw the woman quite clearly, as he had seen her in fancy once before, but she was not on a train, but was standing on a hill. It was winter and the hill was coated with a light blanket of snow and below the hill, in a valley, was a wide river covered with a shining sheet of ice. A man, a middle-aged, rather heavy-looking man stood beside the woman and she was pointing at something in the distance. The stone was set in a ring worn on the extended finger.