All things seemed to be so exquisitely ordered for us in this new life, all flowed so naturally, like one sound-wave into another, with ease so apparent, yet under law so superb, that already I was certain Heaven contained no accidents, and no trivialities; as it did no shocks or revolutions.
“If you like,” said the young girl, “we will cross the sea.”
“But how?” I asked, for I saw no boat.
“Can you not, then, walk upon the water yet?” she answered. “Many of us do, as He did once below. But we no longer call such things miracles. They are natural powers. Yet it is an art to use them. One has to learn it, as we did swimming, or such things, in the old times.”
“I have only been here a short time,” I said, half amused at the little celestial “airs” my young friend wore so sweetly. “I know but little yet. Can you teach me how to walk on water?”
“It would take so much time,” said the young girl, “that I think we should not wait for that. We go on to the next duty, now. You had better learn, I think, from somebody wiser than I. I will take you over another way.”
A great and beautiful shell, not unlike a nautilus, was floating near us, on the incoming tide, and my companion motioned to me to step into this. I obeyed her, laughing, but without any hesitation. “Neither shall there be any more death,” I thought as I glanced over the rose-tinted edges of the frail thing into the water, deeper than any I had ever seen, but unclouded, so that I looked to the bottom of the sea. The girl herself stepped out upon the waves with a practiced air, and lightly drawing the great shell with one hand, bore me after her, as one bears a sledge upon ice. As we came into mid-water we began to meet others, some walking, as she did, some rowing or drifting like myself. Upon the opposite shore uprose the outlines of a more thickly settled community than any I had yet seen.
Watching this with interest that deepened as we approached the shore, I selfishly or uncourteously forgot to converse with my companion, who did not disturb my silence until we landed. As she gave me her hand, she said in a quick, direct tone:
“Well, Miss Mary, I see that you do not know me, after all.”
I felt, as I had already done once or twice before, a certain social embarrassment (which in itself instructed me, as perpetuating one of the minor emotions of life below that I had hardly expected to renew) before my lovely guide, as I shook my head, struggling with the phantasmal memories evoked by her words. No, I did not know her.