He had learned much concerning his own state and powers in the few moments of his sojourn here, but Miriam’s initiation was almost instantaneous. Love opened all gates and shone through all windows; and her incarnate self took him by the hand and gave him full consciousness on the earthly plane, while retaining his spiritual powers. She, on her side, combined with her natural senses the perception of what was above the natural, and saw him and what belonged to his state as he saw her and hers. Such a fulness of communion was ineffable. Their auras blended and kindled into new exaltations, brimming with speech and vision. The pages of their memories lay open before them as living pictures of the events recorded, to be comprehended at a glance; and words spoken in the spirit conveyed significances which no eloquent volubility of earthly tongues could rival. Nevertheless, this boundless speech, descending from its superior degree into the lower, took on there the outward form of mortal utterances, as the endlessness of productivity is enclosed in the simple seed sown in the soil. Conversing together in what, to earthly ears, would seem the simplest terms, they could impart to each other kingdoms of meanings intelligible to the imperial soul.
He and Miriam now stood side by side at the window, and he found himself able to look freely through her material eyes. The swaying and struggling of the mob and its confused uproar were visible and audible to him. A sorry spectacle! But though immeasurably remote from him, and unimportant, he realized that Miriam was still in the toils of it. And he had come hither to rescue her!
Her thought spoke to him. “Dearest, will you not take me where you are? You are free from earth; why may not I be so, also?” The death of the body, the deliverance of the spirit, and immortality of love unhindered for them! A touch on the instrument in the next room could compass it!”
“La, miss, it’s gone that hot, all of a sudden!” remarked Jenny, pushing back the hair from her moist forehead; “like them July days on the beach last summer! Whatever ails me I don’t know!” She was enveloped in the fervent sphere of the lovers’ hearts.
“Dere he comes! Pipe ol’ Torpy over dere!” cried Jim, pointing excitedly to the outskirts of the crowd. “Good t’ing de boss ain’t here; he’d be runnin’ out and git his nut busted! Don’t yer worry, miss; I’ll pertect yer!”
Jack had been exquisitely sensitive to the temptation which Miriam suggested. One stroke for freedom, and all these crudities and absurdities would pass away from them forever! But the roseate atmosphere that surrounded them chilled and darkened a trifle as the impulse knocked at his heart; and the words of the two unconscious mortals made him pause. What would become of them? Had they not the right to live out their earthly lives to the end? Clear perception came to him, also, on the instant, of the greatness of Jim’s devotion and self-abnegation. He felt humbled before him!
Miriam perused his mind and saw his answer to her plea. She sighed, and fortified herself to postpone paradise. The thought of her father strengthened her.
“Yes, love, we will not slight God’s gift,” was her response. The luminous gold and rose brightened and deepened again, and the delicate filaments were interwoven in a warp and woof of lovely figures, dancing lightly through the aerial fabric, keeping time to the measure of their hearts. They drew nearer.
Contemplating with spiritual sight the scene without, they beheld these bewildered souls groping pitifully in darkness and ignorance, seeking through evil and unknown good. Driven helplessly hither and thither by monstrous spirits of hatred, greed, and terror, they fought and yelled and reeled in blind frenzies, lost to love and sanity.
And yonder loomed Torpeon, a dark shape of wrath and tyranny, like the black twist of a tornado reddened with lightnings. He, too, was driven helpless by accursed powers he knew not, most a slave when he deemed himself most dominant. He struck vengefully to right and left, laughing terribly as his victims tumbled, blasted, at his feet, blind to the souls thus freed who hurtled up unseen to assail him. At times the whole scene assumed the appearance of a writhing mass of poisonous serpents stinging one another to death, and the great serpent in the midst, venom oozing from his bloody jaws, burying his fangs in his own swollen coils. And Jack, an hour since, had longed to add his strength to make this horror yet more horrible! He groaned in humiliation.