The truth of being and the truth of knowing are one.
—Bacon.
Cartice and Chrissalyn permitted the Joys to join them in their investigations at certain times, but for the most part they pursued their study of psychic life alone. As they went on, their experiences became more interesting and convincing. In the new world opened to them they made new friends. To be sure they could not see these friends, but they learned to know them well, to love them, and to distinguish one from another as readily and certainly as though they were of the visible part of creation.
One of these new friends called himself Moreau and won their hearts completely with his courteous speech, kind instincts and gentle manners. Indeed, after making his acquaintance they understood how little the personality depends upon that which we call the person, which is but a mask, as the word originally meant. He came often and sometimes remained a whole evening, kindly writing for those who had not yet learned to manipulate Planchette, and answering questions with well-bred patience and never-failing politeness. When asked why he came to them and remained so faithful, when he had not known them here, he explained that he was attracted to both of them, because they were magnetic to him; but that beside, it was his especial mission to make lonely women happier. They learned to rely implicitly upon everything he said, just as they did on the word of Prescott, whose strict truthfulness had been his one vanity.
“How long is the act of dying?” Moreau was asked.
“It is longer for some than for others; but you are sleeping at the time and know it not.”
This statement was corroborated by the others. They said the death-sleep in some cases was of several days’ duration,—days as we reckon them here, but there Time’s markings are unknown, for Time is not.
When Moreau was asked whether he knew everything about his friends here, present and to come, he said: “Not everything. There are some things we are not permitted to know any more than you are.”
“Do you pass on into other stages of existence—experience a change analogous to our dying here?”
“I think so; but I am no more certain of that than you are about your future state.”