“Who, understanding the philosophy of continued life as it has been revealed to you, could fail to try and acquire some of the capital, thieves cannot steal, with which to begin the larger life that opens to us, when we pass the gates of death? It is helping me to make my remaining time of more value.
“You have influenced me as no other person has done ever since I knew you. Now you light the road out of the world for me. I begin to see that there are no accidents.
“Let who will write the shallow tales that reach no farther than the wedding-day. Write you the wonderful story of the love of God, as ’twas told you by those who have tasted death and found it not bitter—tell how this love encompasses and pervades everything in the universe, conserving all and destroying nothing. Tell of the happiness destined for the soul of man, which consists in endless unfolding. Tell all this as simply and directly as you have told it to me, and you will inspire the doubting and cheer the despairing.”
To which Cartice replied: “In an old book it is written, ‘Though one returned from the dead, they would not believe.’”
Kendall wrote: “In the same book it is written, ‘Let your light shine.’”
That night she sat down to write the first chapter of the book, but instead wrote this:
HIS MESSAGE.
He came, my dead love, at the close of the day,
Though the earth had long covered his garments of clay.
His face glowed with light and with love as he smil’d
And spoke in the voice that my heart had beguil’d—
The beautiful voice that my heart had beguil’d.
“You have wondered, my darling, what soul was the one
To first greet me with love when my dying was done—
When I woke from the slumber that stretches between
The flesh-and-blood world and the kingdom unseen—
The world that you see and the kingdom unseen.
“Know then that the spirit, earth’s veil cast away,
Sees only the true in that radiant day.
He who first o’er my spirit, newborn, bent and smiled,
Was the foe who had gone from me unreconciled—
My foe who had gone from me unreconciled.”
So spake my dead love and then vanished away,
Like the mist of the valley when riseth the day.
But I know, since that moment, that hate is a dream
From which the soul wakes when it crosses Death’s stream—
Awakes to love only, across that dark stream.
I know, too, that Death cannot change, cannot kill
E’en the person. My lover, though dead, loves me still;
For he came, as of old, and upon me he smil’d,
And spoke in the voice that my heart had beguil’d—
The beautiful voice that my heart had beguil’d.
The book was begun. The writing of it was not an easy task in spite of the writer’s warm interest in her theme. Little snatches of time, after the daily grind at her editorial desk was over, were all she could devote to it. Often she was too tired to write a line until she had rested hours. Then, perhaps, to make up for such indulgence, she wrote far into the night—wrote as though bayonets were pressing her—wrote with no thought of publisher or public in mind. The truth, to write the truth, as it was revealed to her, this was her inspiration, her strength, her reward.