I wanted to answer, but I was so sleepy. Then, through the little window, I saw her walking through the snow, towards the little car. I saw her climb inside. What a strong figure she was, very sturdy of limb, but with fair skin and a softness to her that made her lovely to behold and most embraceable. I was frightened, however, on account of her leaving me.

When I opened my eyes again, she was standing there with my overcoat over her arm. Lots of money, she said. She’d brought it all back. She’d never seen so much money in packets and wads. What a strange person I was. There was something like twenty-eight thousand dollars there. She’d closed out my account at the hotel. They’d been worried about me. They had seen me run off in the snow. They had made her sign a receipt for everything. This bit of paper she gave to me, as if it was important. She had my other possessions with her, the clothing I had purchased, which was still in its sacks and boxes.

I wanted to thank her. But where were the words? I would thank her when I came back to her in my own body.

After she had put away all the clothing, she fixed us a simple supper of broth again and bread with butter. We ate this together, with a bottle of wine, of which I drank much more than she thought permissible. I must say that this bread and butter and wine was about the best human food I’d tasted so far. I told her so. And I wanted more of the wine, please, because this drunkenness was absolutely sublime.

“Why did you bring me here?” I asked her.

She sat down on the side of the bed, looking towards the fire, playing with her hair, not looking at me. She started to explain again about the overcrowding at the hospital, the epidemic.

“No, why did you do it? There were others there.”

“Because you’re not like anyone I’ve ever known,” she said. “You make me think of a story I once read … about an angel forced to come down to earth in a human body.”

With a flush of pain, I thought of Raglan James telling me that I looked like an angel. I thought of my other body roaming the world, powerful and under his loathsome charge.

She gave a sigh as she looked at me. She was puzzled.

“When this is finished, I’ll come back to you in my real body,” I said. “I’ll reveal myself to you. It may mean something to you to know that you were not deceived; and you are so strong, I suspect the truth won’t hurt you.”

“The truth?”

I explained that often when we revealed ourselves to mortals we drove them mad—for we were unnatural beings, and yet we did not know anything about the existence of God or the Devil. In sum, we were like a religious vision without revelation. A mystic experience, but without a core of truth.