"When, O Death! will she come to where you lead me?"
"It is written, not for many aeons."
"How can I draw her to me to turn her from her dark way to myself?"
"It is written that one soul may draw another after it, if for many births it is willing to wait at the door of death for all souls to pass. See, here it is where these wailing, fainting, quivering ones suffer agonies, greater than you have ever dreamed of in the many walks of your earthly or space life."
A moment the soul gazed on the suffering ones; and as it looked it grew cold and pinched, as if another death had come upon it. "I will wait," it said. "Joy it will be to me to wait for aeons until she whom I love will pass this way!"
"Oh!" cried Death, "it was said among the unseen ones who throng space that you were thus. See, the pang of pain which you in agony bore has forced your beloved to turn and gaze towards you. She leaves her path of mud and darkness and hurries after you. Come on, both of you, and walk the path of gold that is thronged with such as you, the saviour and the saved. Surely in one moment of such love you have unfettered the bonds which bound yourself and your beloved to all that was of earth."
And they passed into the way that led to the higher place.
THE FAIR ONE AND HER SOUL.
The world had grown gray, the golden stars had fled from the skies, and a silence deep yawned at the feet of one who, all hungry for that which she knew not and starved for that which she could not name, moaned: "O Soul! why am I tortured thus? Why dost thou lead me into paths I cannot walk, and drag me into depths that I fear, and scale with me heights whose atmosphere so rare and high is, that faint I grow and ill unto perishing therein. What is the quest of thine? This struggle and this reaching after that which I cannot see or feel? Weak is my flesh, though thou, dear Soul, art strong. It is ever easier for me to fall than to rise. I struggle to keep on with thee, but ever and anon thou mountest to planes where my tired and clumsy feet cannot follow thee. Ofttimes have I called unto thee and implored thee to cease the quest, to rest awhile, to sleep. Thou hast heard my moan now and again and I ran laughing into die garden that awaited me. But when I stood among the blood-red roses and White-cupped lilies and sought to pluck the pretty blossoms, ever in the heart a worm did lurk. So farther I ran to where the fruits hung high. But when on tip-toe I stood to reach the luscious ripe ones that beckoned me, lo! again the over softness of decay did break upon my gaze, and I wanted them not. Then I made to climb some steep hill whereon the clouds did seem to rest, and as I ascended, the clouds did fade farther from me, and I stood with only the cold gray mist about me, chilled and frightened, like a child lost from its mother's side.
"And so it was, O Soul, the pleasures which the earth placed at my feet palled upon me and dragged me down nigh unto the grave. Then I nestled to thee, my beloved Soul, and called thee to save and direct me, and pleaded to thee to save me from this fleshly self that keeps me earth-bound. Then thou wouldst take my hand and with me soar to mountain-heights, and we with outstretched wings would view the rosy glow that the departing sun did cast about us as it waved its grand adieu to the world we knew. Thus we stood, I trembling with gladness, thou thrilling with joy, but, O Soul, my poor fleshly self could not long abide such ecstasy nor drink the rarefied wine which the Heavens vouchsafed us, and crying I clung to thee and dragged thee down, down, until both again stood at the bottom of the heights where lately we had spied the door that leads to broader worlds. Thou, my beloved, hadst folded thy widespread wings, and thy feet were planted in the dank grasses whose roots were deep in mire. O tell me, thou whose awakening is so beautiful and whose stature is full of grace, tell me, O Soul, why, though coupled together, are we yet divided; why, though one, are we yet two?"