“In mercy’s name, don’t taunt me!” John’s voice was a sort of groan. “I did value you. I tried to save you from myself. God knows how hard I tried. It seems incredible to me now that I should have torn you from her—trampled on you——”
“Trampled me? You never did that.” Her timidity conquered by sight of his suffering, Innocentia touched his arm. “Not for one minute was I really afraid of you. A great love, such as yours, could not harm me. Amor often told me that. I stayed close to her on Earth and crossed with her into Shadow Land.”
“Even down there we’ve been with her most of the time,” Amor added.
“Down there?” Startled out of his shame, John Cabot peered into the care-worn faces of the guardian pair. “You mean—she is assigned——”
He read the answer in their distressed, averted looks. His mind was quickly made.
“Lead on—and down!”
“But, John——” Young Jack clung tight to one of the knotted fists that hung at his father’s side—“you can’t go into Gehenna. You and I are assigned to the Fields. It is a rule here that we can go on, but never back.”
“Go on—without her?” John laughed in a short, hard way. “There is no right in a rule that assigns me to Elysium and her to Gehenna. I’ll find a way to prove that one man feels responsible for a woman’s fall. Son, I am going to bring her back with me.”
“If you could, John—if only you could!” Afraid, yet brave to believe in the power of his god of Earth, the boy-soul gazed into his father’s face. “You’ll look for me, John, first thing when you come back? A little way on there are bowers and villas that the shades build to live in while their eyes and minds are getting used to the Light. They leave them empty for anyone to take when they’re ready to progress nearer the Source. You’ll know the one I’m in if you listen to hear Dick sing. I’ll be waiting for you and—and her, John Cabot.”
“Jack Cabot, until we meet again!”