“How long?”
“A matter of weeks. Not more. Banneker, do you believe in a personal immortality?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“I don’t know, either. I was thinking.... If it were so; when she gets across, what she will feel when she finds her man waiting for her. God!” He lifted his face to the great trees that moved and murmured overhead. “How that heart of hers has sung to him all these years!”
He lifted his voice and sent it rolling through the cathedral aisles of the forest, in the superb finale of the last hymn.
“For even the purest delight may pall, And power must fail, and the pride must fall And the love of the dearest friends grow small— But the glory of the Lord is all in all.”
The great voice was lost in the sighing of the winds. They rode on, thoughtful and speechless. When the physician turned to his companion again, it was with a brisk change of manner.
“And now we’ll consider you.”
“Nothing to consider,” declared Banneker.
“Is your professional judgment better than mine?” retorted the other. “How much weight have you lost since you’ve been out here?”