"And at the worst?"
"Freedom: escape from narrow walls--often dark and foul."
"In any case nothing but a change, a swift and absolute change, from what was to what is?"
"Even so."
"And you have no fear?"
"None. Why should I?"
"Why should you not?"
Again there was a sudden silence between the two. At last the Soul spoke:
"Why should I not? I cannot tell you. But I have no fear. I am a Son of G.o.d."
"And we?"
"Ah, yes, dear brother: you, too, and the Body."
"But we perish!"
"There is the resurrection of the Body."
"Where--when?"
"As it is written. In G.o.d"s hour."
"Is the worm also the Son of G.o.d?"
The soul stared downward into the green water, but did not answer. A look of strange trouble was in his eyes.
"Is not the Grave on the hither side of Eternity?"
Still no answer.
"Does G.o.d whisper beneath the Tomb?"
At this the Soul rose, and moved restlessly to and fro.
"Tell me," resumed the Will, "what is Dissolution?"
"It is the returning into dust of that which was dust."
"And what is dust?"
"The formless: the inchoate: the ma.s.s out of which the Potter makes new vessels, or moulds new shapes."
"But _you_ do not go into dust?"
"I came from afar: afar I go again."
"But we--we shall be formless: inchoate?"
"You shall be upbuilded."
"How?"
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?"
"G.o.d 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 pa.s.ses in a chemic change into the living world?"
"No: that is not a resurrection: that is a trans.m.u.tation."
"Yet that is all. There is nothing else possible. Dust unto dust. As with the Body, so with the mind, the spirit of life, that which I am, the Will. In the Grave there is no fretfulness any more: neither any sorrow, or joy, or any thought, or dream, or fear, or hope whatsoever.
Hath not G.o.d Himself said it, through the mouth of His prophet?"
"I do not understand," murmured the Soul, troubled.
"Because the Grave is not your portion."
"But I, too, must know Death!"
"Yes, truly--a change what was it?--a change from a dream of Beauty, to Beauty!"
"G.o.d knows I would that we could go together--you, and he yonder, and I; or, if that cannot be, he being wholly mortal, then at the least you and I."
"But we cannot. At least, so it seems to us. But I--I too am alive, I too have dreams and visions, I too have joys and hopes, I too have despairs. And for me--_nothing_. I am, at the end, as a blown flame."
"It may not be so. Something has whispered to me at times that you and I are to be made one."
"Tell me: can the immortal wed the mortal?"