“Perhaps. But I erred through the worser part of my nature, and you through the better. My revolt against unselfishness was physical, and yours intellectual. Therefore you fell farther than I, by as much as the mind is better than the body; don’t you see?”
“That is speciously put, but I doubt its truth.”
Both were silent for a space.
“I have it!” she breathed suddenly, and her voice was stronger; for even in the clutches of death a new insight into the meaning of things had power to stimulate her whole being. “It is this way. Our error was the same. We both betrayed their trust in us. We grieved love. And the reason that we remember now is that love and God are one, and this is the judgment. That is why we see their eyes rebuking us. It comes to us, now that we die. That is all life is for—to learn not to grieve love. Why did I never know it before? Oh, if I had put that in my books!”
“If you had put it in your life it would have been better,” interrupted the man; but she went on, unheeding:
“That must be what they meant when they said my work lacked conviction. It is the heart that takes sides. One man said I was too clever to be interesting. I never understood what he meant before, but I see now. It was that I had mind enough but too little heart. I wanted to become as one of the gods by knowing, and the appointed path is by loving. To be human and to love is to be divine.”
“Oh, wise conclusion!” mocked the man. “What does it profit you to know it—now?”
She was silent, spent with the effort of her eager speech. The maps on the opposite wall whirled before her eyes. She felt herself slipping—slipping. Yet, though she found no words to tell him why, there came to her a sudden, sweet assurance that it profited her much, even at this last hour, to know the thing she had just spoken.
It was a long time before she found strength to ask: “Shall you be here after I am gone?”
“Why?”