“That’s exactly it. It makes no difference. He couldn’t atone here for an act committed by him during another existence. But that particular minute goes pretty red into its pigeon-hole, you may be sure.”
“Oh, it’s wild nonsense,” I laughed. “You can’t possibly be consistent.”
“Can’t I? Look here, you are my friend yesterday, and to-day, and always, I hope. I judge you daily on your merits, yet, for all I know, you may have committed murder in one of your past existences?”
The blood went back upon my heart. Then a great longing awoke in me to tell all to this self-reliant soul and gain comfort of my sorrow. But where was the good in the broad face of his theory?
“Well,” I said, with a sigh, “I’ve done things at least I bitterly repent of.”
“That’s the conventional way of looking at it. Repentance in this won’t avail a former existence. Past days of mine have had their troubles, no doubt, but this day I have before me unclouded and to do what I like with.”
“Well, what shall we do with it?” said I. “I hand it over to you to make it a happiness for me. I dare say we shall find plenty of sorrows between sunrise and evening to give it a melancholy charm.”
“Rubbish!” cried my friend. “Cant, cant, cant, ever to suppose that sorrow is necessary to happiness! We mortals, I tell you, have an infinite capacity for delight; given health, spiritual and bodily, we could dance in the sunbeams for eternity and never reach a surfeit of pleasure.”
“Duke,” said I—“may I call you Duke?”
“Of course.”