“Leads!—it—leads! ahem! Death encountered with stoic equanimity is the highest point to which—”
“I do not ask how to meet death, but what it leads to. You seem unable or unwilling to answer a plain question. My dear father, does he live still—as a star that for a while sets below the horizon but returns again?”
“He lives, most assuredly. In all men’s mouths—on the snowy plains of Germany, on the arid wastes of Syria, the fame of Cnæus Domitius Corbulo——”
“I asked naught about his fame, but about himself. Does he still exist, can he still think of, care for, love me—as I still think of, care for, love him—”
Her voice quivered and broke.
“Young lady—Socrates could say no more of the future than that it is a brilliant hope which one may run the risk of entertaining. And our own Immortal Cicero declared that the hope of the soul living after death is a dream, and not a doctrine. The Immortals have seen fit to cut the thread of his life——”
“The Immortals had no scissors wherewith to do it. He fell on his own sword. Is there a soul? And after death where does it go? Is it a mere shadow?”
“My dear lady, philosophy teaches us to hope——”
“Natural instinct does that without the cumbrous assistance of philosophy—but what is that hope built on?”
“I cannot tell.”