All this time has the Presence stood before Moses Grant, looking into his troubled face with its piercing eyes, and reading his every thought.
'Answer me now,' it said, 'have you yet begun to live?'
Then there was another and greater struggle in the mind of Moses. Pride said to him: 'Send this intrusive visitor away, or flee yourself.' But still the visitor stood there, waiting so calmly, and again Moses realized that the great world had faded from his vision; so he could neither send away the intruder, nor fly himself. Still those calm eyes looked into his inmost soul.
'Oh!' he cried at last, 'you have searched me through and through. No, I have not lived—I have not been born, I have no life for you to record in your book. Now, pray leave me—leave me in peace!'
'That were impossible,' said the Presence, 'you know not peace. You pride yourself on your possessions; but how can you have life or possessions, if they are not recorded in my book? The earth, that you love so well, has faded away. It will return to you for a brief moment, and then it will fade forever. What you now possess is but a shadow, like a sun-gilt cloud in a summer sky—changing and changing, and fading and fading, till at last it disappears. You have, if God wills, a few more years of mortal existence, and then, oh! then, you must exchange shadows for realities.'
'Leave me, oh! leave me!' cried Moses.
'Not yet; my mission is not fulfilled. Here in this book your name was written sixty years age, as one to be born. Here your ledger has been kept, though you knew it not. Read the pages with your soul, and see how your account stands.'
Oh! how dark the page. A line was drawn through the middle, from top to bottom, and the good deeds were recorded on one side, in letters of gold, and the bad deeds on the other side in letters of ink. As the pages were turned, Moses looked eagerly for the bright letters, but they were few—too few; while every page was almost filled with the black records of selfish and sinful deeds. Every page made Moses Grant sicker at heart, and he would gladly have withdrawn his eyes from the book, but they were riveted, and he could not.
'O poor man!' exclaimed the Presence, in pity; 'how poor do you find yourself, you who were a little while ago so rich! But you must read no more, lest you sink in despair.'
And the book was closed. Moses Grant said not a word; his heart was too full to speak—too full of grief—too empty of hope.