“Oh no, indeed, not here—hereafter. We must die here, of course, but then we ‘enter into eternal life.’ The soul lives forever.”
“How do you know?” she inquired.
“I won’t attempt to prove it to you,” I hastily continued. “Let us assume it to be so. How does this idea strike you?”
Again she smiled at me, that adorable, dimpling, tender, mischievous, motherly smile of hers. “Shall I be quite, quite honest?”
“You couldn’t be anything else,” I said, half gladly and half a little sorry. The transparent honesty of these women was a never-ending astonishment to me.
“It seems to me a singularly foolish idea,” she said calmly. “And if true, most disagreeable.”
Now I had always accepted the doctrine of personal immortality as a thing established. The efforts of inquiring spiritualists, always seeking to woo their beloved ghosts back again, never seemed to me necessary. I don’t say I had ever seriously and courageously discussed the subject with myself even; I had simply assumed it to be a fact. And here was the girl I loved, this creature whose character constantly revealed new heights and ranges far beyond my own, this superwoman of a superland, saying she thought immortality foolish! She meant it, too.
“What do you want it for?” she asked.
“How can you not want it!” I protested. “Do you want to go out like a candle? Don’t you want to go on and on—growing and—and—being happy, forever?”
“Why, no,” she said. “I don’t in the least. I want my child—and my child’s child—to go on—and they will. Why should I want to?”