He laughed, his fingers busy with her hair.
"I can well believe that I babbled about them. Er's idea of the eight whorls, inserted in one another was founded on the Greeks' conception of astronomy. Never mind. I'll lend you the translation....
"I am only prefacing my own vision (if you can call it that when you know) with the mention of all this, to show you how my mind has been running on Plato for the sake of one passage in his Republic, portraying Earthly Love as a frantic and savage Master."
Said Ferlie, "He is a Master who can be enslaved."
"Your faith tells you so. I only saw it in my—dream. Do you know that I believe, like Er, I have been dead?"
"You were dead. Your heart had stopped beating. You must have been unconscious for a long time. And now, being you, you are wondering whether knowledge acquired during an experience in Death should be pushed aside by your well-balanced living mind. What did you see?"
"It was not exactly a seeing. It was a knowing. I was dead and I knew I was dead. But I was still alive, most terribly and poignantly. You were the Dead—on this side of the Dark, belted down, like Er's universe, from the light. But I was struggling so passionately to return and be dead with you here, rather than alive with all those other Living, that, like Er, I think I was shown the way to break through....
"One has heard of people in trances waking in the grave. Can you be sure with me, Ferlie, that this was more than a trance?"
"God knows I can!" she said earnestly.
"You need not have been afraid. I would have wrenched the way through to you if you had not come back to me. For that reason I took your revolver."