The Soul turned, and again sat by his comrade.
"I know not," he said simply.
"But if the Body go back to the dust, and the life that is in him be blown out like a wavering flame; and if you who came from afar, again return afar; what, then, for me, who am neither an immortal spirit nor yet of this frail human clan?"
"God has need of you."
"When—where?"
"How can I tell what I cannot even surmise?"
"Tell me, tell me this: if I am so wedded to the Body that, if he perish, I perish also, what resurrection can there be for me?"
"I do not know."
"Is it a resurrection for the Body if, after weeks, or years, or scores of years, his decaying dust is absorbed into the earth, and passes in a chemic change into the living world?"
"No: that is not a resurrection: that is a transmutation."