"Yes—yes—O Soul! I remember, I remember."
"It was true there: it is true here. Have I not ever told you that Love would save?"
With that the Soul moved over to the bedside, and kissed the Body.
"Farewell, fallen leaf. But the tree lives—and beyond the tree is the wind, the breath of the eternal."
"Look," he added, "our comrade is still asleep, though now no mortal skill could nourish the hidden spark"; and with that he stooped and kissed again the silent lips and the still brow and the pulseless heart, and suddenly a breath, an essence, came from the body, in form like itself, a phantom, yet endued with a motion of life.
As the faintest murmur in a shell we heard him whisper, Life! Life! Life! Then, as a blown vapour, he was one with us. A singular change came upon the clay which had once been so near and dear to us: a frozen whiteness that had not been there before, a stillness as of ancient marble.
The Will stood, appalled, with wild eyes. Some dreadful invisible power was upon him.
"Lost!" he cried; and now his voice, too, was faint as a murmur in a shell. But the Soul smiled.
Then the Will grew grey as a willow-leaf aslant in the wind; and as the shadow of a reed wavered in the wind; and as a reed's shadow is and is not, so was he suddenly no more.
But, in the miracle of a moment, the Soul appeared in the triple mystery of substance, and mind, and spirit. In full and joyous life the Will stood re-born, and now we three were one again.