"No, he never came back."
"And he never will come back, the way the stories said?"
"Oh, yes, I think he will."
For a few minutes Helen watched the water that was whirling by the side of the ship and I looked at the colors of the sea and the sky, that were growing brighter still. Then she said: "But if King Arthur really died and really was buried at Glastonbury and the three Queens didn't cure his wound at all, how can he come back?"
"I don't know whether I can make you see it quite as I do," I said, "but I will try. You know what it was that King Arthur tried to do. I have told you all these stories very badly, if you do not. He tried to save his people from the harms and the wrongs that they suffered. He tried to make all of them, the rich and the poor, the lords and the common people, good and brave and strong, true and gentle and noble. And he did make them better and happier than they were before. But the time had not come for all that he wished. After he passed away things got to be as bad almost, as they had been before. Some people, here in our own time, think that the world is not growing any better. That is because they look back only a few years, perhaps a hundred, and they do not see any change. There has been a change, though they do not see it. But they would see it, if they would look back to those fearful old days before Arthur came, yes, or half way back, for there were days then that were not much better. They would see then how selfish and how cruel men were and what wicked and heartless things they would do for a little power or a little gain.
"This was what Arthur tried to change, and he did change it partly, for a little while. But it was too soon to change it altogether. When he was gone everything soon came to be nearly as it was before. Yet it was never quite the same again, perhaps. Other good men came, not with the strength of Arthur, yet with a strength of their own. And they passed away too and left England and the world a little better than they had found them. Slowly and slowly, yet surely and surely, men have thought more, learned more, worked more, and so, slowly and slowly, yet surely and surely, they have grown wiser and juster and stronger, and so, too, they have grown freer and better and happier.
"The men of England and of our own country and of all the world are not yet what Arthur would have had them. They are still far from it, perhaps, yet they are nearer to it, and they are always getting nearer still. The way is long and it seems hopeless, sometimes, but it is not hopeless. And in some great, good time, far off, when this England and our own country and all the world come to be as just and noble and happy as Arthur tried to make his people—then cannot men say: 'King Arthur is not dead any more; he has come back and is among us again, for it is his will that guides us and it is his law that rules us now?' Do you see now how Arthur did not die, but only passed away, to come again? And do you see how he may come again, even though they buried him there at Glastonbury?"
"I don't know," Helen said, after she had thought for a minute. "I don't think I quite understand it, and any way, I would rather you would tell stories than talk like that."
But I had no more stories to tell just then, and so we only stood and watched the water and the sky, while the ship carried us along, farther and farther away from the dim, dark rocks, with the fog around them, and on toward the gold and the purple in the west.
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