His spirit was unquenchable, his fervor undying. His enthusiasm rose superior to the claims of physical dissolution. She didn't try any longer to force him to husband his strength. She knew he wanted to go down with colors flying, militant. She knelt by his bed and bowed her head, so as to lose no word of those precious words which were to be his last.
"I think the great Teacher is educating us out of the physical. He puts two objects in our hands, then He shows us that if you take one object from two objects it leaves one object, and we are altogether concerned with the objects, stones, or sticks, or flowers that fade, and by and by He takes away the objects because we no longer need them. We have grasped the truth, the fixed, unalterable truth, that one from two leaves one. I saw two little street urchins once standing outside a great shop window filled with things they desired—playthings. One said 'I choose that.' And the other said 'I choose that.' Finally they chose the same object, and there was a battle, a fierce, cruel fight, for what neither of them had or could have. We are like that. And so God, little by little, takes away from us houses and lands and bodies, playthings, that we may know the truths of spirit."
Wah-na-gi raised her bowed head to look at him.
"Your face shines with a strange light," she said with an awed whisper.
"I am very close to the Hereafter, Wah-na-gi."
"I shall be very lonely when you are gone."
"Ah, my child, you are lonely now, grieving for him, for Hal, grieving, grieving."
"Yes, so it will be always."
He knew that each day as the sun crept up over the Moquitch she stood on the rock and scanned the horizon, and gazed long across the trail where he had disappeared and whence he would return, if he returned.
"I came between you and the man you loved," he said, putting his hand gently on her glossy hair. "Don't hold it up against me. I thought I was doing right. I loved you both. Nothing would have made me happier than to see you one. I have prayed that I might be spared to put your hand in his, to say the words that would make you man and wife, to see you happy, but happiness mustn't be stolen. It must be earned. And so I drove him away, drove him back to duty, because I loved him. When I'm gone, send him word and ask him not to hold it up against me, and God will surely bless this sacrifice. Oh, yes, God will surely bless you."