The darkness that clung around her so closely seemed alive, almost thrilling, as it did, with fibres of communication perceptible only to a sixth sense. She marvelled at the strangeness of it, but was no longer afraid. Her fear had vanished at the bidding of someone else.
Why was it? she asked herself, for the hundredth time, and almost immediately the answer came: "Why not?"
Why not, indeed? If a wireless telegraph instrument, sending its call into space, may be answered with lightning-like swiftness by another a thousand miles away, why should not a thought, without the clumsy medium of speech, instantly respond to another thought from a mind in harmony with it?
A subtle analogy appeared between the earth and the body, the tower from which the wireless signalled and the thought which called to another. When the physical forces were at their lowest ebb, and the powers of the spirit had risen to keep the balance true, why was not communication possible always between soul and soul? And, if one lived always above the fog of sense, as far as the earth-bound may, what would be the need of speech or touch between those who belonged to one another?
Two Views
She and Alden "belonged," there was no doubt of that. She had, for him, the woman's recognition of her mate, which is never to be mistaken or denied when once it has asserted itself. "Why," she thought, "will people marry without it?" The other mind responded instantly: "Because they don't know."
Marriage presented itself before her in two phases, the one sordid and unworthy, as it so often is, the other as it might be—the earthly seal upon a heavenly bond. But, if the heavenly relationship existed, was the other essential? Her heart answered "No."
Slowly she began to see her way through the maze of things. "Dust to dust, earth to earth, ashes to ashes." Then she laughed outright, for that was part of the burial service, and she had been thinking of something else. And yet—earth to earth meant only things that belonged together; why not soul to soul?
Warm tides of assurance and love flowed through her heart, cleansing, strengthening, sweeping barriers aside in a mighty rush of joy. What barriers could earth interpose, when two belonged to each other in such heavenly ways as this? Step by step her soul mounted upward to the heights, keeping pace with another, in the room beyond.
Edith's Revelation