“Yes, my belovèd, my wife, my own—thank God, I do remember. And I love you with every fibre of my being.”
He knew the time was short. There must be no delay.
He drew her wedding-ring from his finger, slipped it back to its rightful place, and laid his lips on ring and finger together.
“I love you utterly,” he said, “and I hold you mine for ever.”
“Nigel, my husband, this time it is I who go, and you who remain behind. You will be braver than I.”
“My own,” he answered, “we shall be together in the place where alone true joys are to be found; safe within the circle of the Will of God. Since I left you and went out into the sunrise, I, who before was empty, have become rich beyond all human comprehension in the possession of three different memories. I remember the thirty years of this present life. I remember the precious love which was ours in the life before, and, remembering that, my heart has grown so rich that I care not to remember aught else of that life, but just the utter sweetness of our wedded love. And, best of all, it has been granted me to remember something of the wonder of that eternal Dwelling Place—that short while in Eternity, before our great love drew me back to Time—not in detail, but in its larger lines of truth.”
“Ah, tell me that,” she whispered. “I know the precious past. I know much of the present. Tell me of the Eternity between.”
“God’s love,” he said, “is the great Dwelling Place; God’s Will, the very air we breathe. The passionate desire of every soul, freed from the earthly prison of the flesh, is to return that love, to do that Will. The Son of God, walking the earth as man—though emptied, for the time being, of His eternal memory—remembered this, and gave His fellow men the perfect prayer: ‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven.’ When that prayer finds its complete fulfilment, earth’s hard perplexities will all be solved, earth’s tears all wiped away. His perfect Will ensures man’s perfect joy. The next petition in the pattern prayer bears out this thought. ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ What food is to the body, doing the Will of God is to the soul. He Who taught us thus to pray, was the one man who could say with absolute honesty: ‘My meat is to do the Will of Him that sent me.’
“All souls know this by instinct. The sinner knows it in his sin, and fails to find in sin a lasting pleasure. The agnostic knows it in his search after something which can meet and satisfy the craving of his mind. The martyr knows it, and laughs at the cruel flame. The angels know it, and fly swiftly on strong wings. Christ knew it, in Gethsemane, and hushed the natural protest of his human agony, and summed up His life’s purpose in those perfect words: ‘Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.’ When the last rebel soul has yielded and understood, then the great End will come; God will be All in all.”
He paused and laid his forehead upon her folded hands.