Hence the
strength of those first impressions that had stormed him. The woman had
belief; however wild and strange, it was sacred to her. The secret of
her influence was--conviction. His attitude shifted several points then. The wonder in him passed over
into awe. The things she knew were real. They were not merely
imaginative speculations. "I knew I was not wrong in thinking you in sympathy with this line of
thought," she was saying in lower voice, steady with earnestness, and as
though she had read his mind. "You, too, know, though perhaps you hardly
realise that you know. It lies so deep in you that you only get vague
feelings of it--intimations of memory. Isn't that the case?" Henriot gave assent with his eyes; it was the truth. "What we know instinctively," she continued, "is simply what we are
trying to remember. Knowledge is memory." She paused a moment watching
his face closely. "At least, you are free from that cheap scepticism
which labels these old beliefs as superstition." It was not even a
question. "I--worship real belief--of any kind," he stammered, for her words and
the close proximity of her atmosphere caused a strange upheaval in his
heart that he could not account for. He faltered in his speech. "It is
the most vital quality in life--rarer than deity." He was using her own
phrases even. "It is creative. It constructs the world anew--"

"And may reconstruct the old." She said it, lifting her face above him a little, so that her eyes
looked down into his own. It grew big and somehow masculine. It was the
face of a priest, spiritual power in it. Where, oh where in the echoing
Past had he known this woman's soul? He saw her in another setting, a
forest of columns dim about her, towering above giant aisles. Again he
felt the Desert had come close. Into this tent-like hall of the hotel
came the sifting of tiny sand. It heaped softly about the very furniture
against his feet, blocking the exits of door and window. It shrouded the
little present. The wind that brought it stirred a veil that had hung
for ages motionless....

She had been saying many things that he had missed while his mind went
searching. "There were types of life the Atlantean system knew it might
revive--life unmanifested to-day in any bodily form," was the sentence
he caught with his return to the actual present. "A type of life?" he whispered, looking about him, as though to see who
it was had joined them; "you mean a--soul? Some kind of soul, alien to
humanity, or to--to any forms of living thing in the world to-day?" What
she had been saying reached him somehow, it seemed, though he had not
heard the words themselves. Still hesitating, he was yet so eager to
hear. Already he felt she meant to include him in her purposes, and that
in the end he must go willingly. So strong was her persuasion on his
mind. And he felt as if he knew vaguely what was coming. Before she answered
his curious question--prompting it indeed--rose in his mind that strange
idea of the Group-Soul: the theory that big souls cannot express
themselves in a single individual, but need an entire group for their
full manifestation. He listened intently. The reflection that this sudden intimacy was
unnatural, he rejected, for many conversations were really gathered
into one. Long watching and preparation on both sides had cleared the
way for the ripening of acquaintance into confidence--how long he dimly
wondered? But if this conception of the Group-Soul was not new, the
suggestion Lady Statham developed out of it was both new and
startling--and yet always so curiously familiar. Its value for him lay,
not in far-fetched evidence that supported it, but in the deep belief
which made it a vital asset in an honest inner life. "An individual," she said quietly, "one soul expressed completely in a
single person, I mean, is exceedingly rare. Not often is a physical
instrument found perfect enough to provide it with adequate expression. In the lower ranges of humanity--certainly in animal and insect
life--one soul is shared by many. Behind a tribe of savages stands one
Savage. A flock of birds is a single Bird, scattered through the
consciousness of all. They wheel in mid-air, they migrate, they obey the
deep intelligence called instinct--all as one. The life of any one lion
is the life of all--the lion group-soul that manifests itself in the
entire genus. An ant-heap is a single Ant; through the bees spreads the
consciousness of a single Bee." Henriot knew what she was working up to. In his eagerness to hasten
disclosure he interrupted--

"And there may be types of life that have no corresponding bodily
expression at all, then?" he asked as though the question were forced
out of him. "They exist as Powers--unmanifested on the earth to-day?" "Powers," she answered, watching him closely with unswerving stare,
"that need a group to provide their body--their physical expression--if
they came back." "Came back!" he repeated below his breath. But she heard him. "They once had expression. Egypt, Atlantis knew
them--spiritual Powers that never visit the world to-day." "Bodies," he whispered softly, "actual bodies?" "Their sphere of action, you see, would be their body. And it might be
physical outline. So potent a descent of spiritual life would select
materials for its body where it could find them. Our conventional notion
of a body--what is it? A single outline moving altogether in one
direction. For little human souls, or fragments, this is sufficient. But
for vaster types of soul an entire host would be required." "A church?" he ventured. "Some Body of belief, you surely mean?" She bowed her head a moment in assent. She was determined he should
seize her meaning fully. "A wave of spiritual awakening--a descent of spiritual life upon a
nation," she answered slowly, "forms itself a church, and the body of
true believers are its sphere of action. They are literally its bodily
expression. Each individual believer is a corpuscle in that Body. The
Power has provided itself with a vehicle of manifestation. Otherwise we
could not know it. And the more real the belief of each individual, the
more perfect the expression of the spiritual life behind them all. A
Group-soul walks the earth. Moreover, a nation naturally devout could
attract a type of soul unknown to a nation that denies all faith. Faith
brings back the gods.... But to-day belief is dead, and Deity has left
the world." She talked on and on, developing this main idea that in days of older
faiths there were deific types of life upon the earth, evoked by worship
and beneficial to humanity. They had long ago withdrawn because the
worship which brought them down had died the death. The world had grown
pettier. These vast centres of Spiritual Power found no "Body" in which
they now could express themselves or manifest.... Her thoughts and
phrases poured over him like sand. It was always sand he felt--burying
the Present and uncovering the Past....