“It seems to me,”—he faltered oddly under her gaze—“that I have some right to know——”
Suddenly she opened her eyes to the full. “You love me, then?” she asked softly.
“I swear,” he cried impetuously, moved as by the force of a rising tide, “I never felt before—I have never known any other girl who——”
“Then you have the right to know,” she calmly interrupted his confused confession; “for love shares all secrets.”
She paused, and a thrill like fire ran swiftly through him. Her words lifted him off the earth, and he felt a radiant happiness, followed almost the same instant in horrible contrast by the thought of death. He became aware that she had turned her eyes upon his own and was speaking again.
“The real life I speak of,” she whispered, “is the old, old life within, the life of long ago, the life to which you, too, once belonged, and to which you still belong.”
A faint wave of memory troubled the deeps of his soul as her low voice sank into him. What she was saying he knew instinctively to be true, even though he could not as yet understand its full purport. His present life seemed slipping from him as he listened, merging his personality in one that was far older and greater. It was this loss of his present self that brought to him the thought of death.
“You came here,” she went on, “with the purpose of seeking it, and the people felt your presence and are waiting to know what you decide, whether you will leave them without having found it, or whether——”
Her eyes remained fixed upon his own, but her face began to change, growing larger and darker with an expression of age.
“It is their thoughts constantly playing about your soul that makes you feel they watch you. They do not watch you with their eyes. The purposes of their inner life are calling to you, seeking to claim you. You were all part of the same life long, long ago, and now they want you back again among them.”