roth
looked at me with a smile that was full, half of gaiety and half of
tenderness. "There," he said, "what do you think of that? If all had
gone well with me, as they say on earth, that is where I should be now,
going down to the city with Charles. That is the prospect which to the
dear old people seems so satisfactory compared with this! In that house
I lay ill for some weeks, and from there my body was carried out. And
they would have kept me there if they could--and I myself did not want
to go. I was afraid. Oh, how I envied Charles going down to the city
and coming back for tea, to read the magazines aloud or play backgammon.
I am afraid I was not as nice as I should have been about all that--the
evenings were certainly dull!"

"But what do you feel about it now?" I said. "Don't you feel sorry for
the muddle and ignorance and pathos of it all? Can't something be done
to show everybody what a ghastly mistake it is, to get so tied down to
the earth and the things of earth?"

"A mistake?" said Amroth. "There is no such thing as a mistake. One
cannot sorrow for their grief, any more than one can sorrow for the
child who cries out in the tunnel and clasps his mother's hand. Don't
you see that their grief and loss is the one beautiful thing in those
lives, and all that it is doing for them, drawing them hither? Why, that
is where we grow and become strong, in the hopeless suffering of love. I
am glad and content that my own stay was made so brief. I wish it could
be shortened for the three--and yet I do not, because they will gain so
wonderfully by it. They are mounting fast; it is their very ignorance
that teaches them. Not to know, not to perceive, but to be forced to
believe in love, that is the point."

"Yes," I said, "I see that; but what about the lives that are broken and
poisoned by grief, in a stupor of pain--or the souls that do not feel it
at all, except as a passing shadow--what about them?"

"Oh," said Amroth lightly, "the sadder the dream the more blessed the
awakening; and as for those who cannot feel--well, it will all come to
them, as they grow older."

"Yes," I said, "it has done me good to see all this--it makes many
things plain; but can you bear to leave them thus?"

"Leave them!" said Amroth. "Who knows but that I shall be sent to help
them away, and carry them, as I carried you, to the crystal sea of
peace? The darling mother, I shall be there at her awakening. They are
old spirits, those t