“Most of my life, as I look back upon it, seems to have been mere blind groping. Now, when I think I have learned how to live, the business of life is done. And I have learned how to work in a way that never would meet failure; but that, too, is done.
“And yet, in spite of the mystery and the grimness of it, something tells me all is well; that nothing can be lost; that what I have learned will be useful somewhere. Perhaps we are here for the purpose of learning how to live and work. When that is accomplished, we must go on and learn other things, and we can take no other road than the one we have named Death, and painted black. But you and I know that it leads into light, and, though we die, we shall continue to live, and shall evolve, unfold and expand, even ‘it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’
“Yet knowing this—for we have knowledge, not simply belief—there are moments when a childish terror seizes me. But why should I fear? Millions have traveled the same road, the timid and faint-hearted as well as the bold and brave, and all went forth alone. We say alone, because we see no visible companions go with them; yet we know that no one is ever alone, either here or on that inscrutable journey, or at its end.
“But notwithstanding all I have learned of the life to follow this, I cannot picture it—cannot form any clear idea of it. Nor can I realize that life as I know it now must end. I try to think of the days to come when I shall not be here, nor be anywhere as I am now, and when the form through which I act will have vanished utterly from the face of the earth, but I cannot! I cannot!
“I am always I in consciousness, always existing, never dead, never different. Is it not the mystery of mysteries?
“I try to imagine a time when I may come here to our little home and be unseen by you, unable to lift a book, flutter a curtain or speak one word that you can hear; but I cannot. How inconceivable it is that in a short time I shall be in a condition so different from this that imagination itself cannot paint it!”
Cartice awoke from sleep one day with a loud cry, a wail of terror that went to the heart.
“What is it, dear?” asked Lilla, bending over her.
Her eyes wandered wildly around the room, and at last, reassured by a sight of familiar objects, lost their look of affright.
“It must have been a dream,” she said, “but so very real. I was lying under the elm tree at home, as I so often did when a child; yet I was as I am now. Close about me came a little company of people shining like the sun. When they were very near, I knew them to be people from my planet—my own people, whom I remember well, and whom I saw in a dream years ago. One, a woman, the most beautiful of all, had a face so familiar I almost spoke her name; but I could not quite grasp it, though she seemed very near and dear to me.