have never seen. 'Where, then, are they?' I asked
myself, 'since neither earth, hell, nor heaven knows them more? Has God
some fearful fate in store for sinners, which may one day fall upon me
as it has already fallen upon them?' And so I set myself to discover
what had become of these missing faces, and you shall hear the result.

"When you and I were children, we were taught that every human being is
born with an immortal soul. But they did not tell us that just as
neglected diseases can kill the body, so unchecked sin can kill the
soul. But it is so, and that is what I meant when I said that he of whom
you asked was 'of the dead who die.'

"You shake your head, and mutter that I am mad. Well, perhaps I am
mad--mad with the horror of my unbelief; but why should it not be as I
say? When God made man He made a creature to whom it was given to choose
for himself between good and evil. But God knew that some of those He
had thus made would deliberately choose evil, that some few would indeed
sin away all trace of their Divine origin. God did not _will_ it so, for
He made us men, not machines, and the evil we do is of our own choosing;
but God _fore-knew_ it, and, foreknowing that, God owed it to Himself
not to call into being a creature the result of whose creation would be
that creature's eternal misery. Hence it was that He decreed that those
for whom there could be no hope of heaven should die out at their deaths
like the brutes. Our life is from God, and may not God take His own
again? And could anything better happen to many people whom you and I
have known on earth than that they should be allowed to die out, and the
very memory of them to pass away for ever?"

I was convinced that he was mad--mad, as he had himself hinted, with the
horror of his unbelief.

"And I am one of them," he exclaimed. "I am of the dead who die! I have
bartered away life, faith, and happiness for Dead Sea fruit; I, who once
was young, and not altogether as I now am, a soulless creature of clay!
For I can remember the time when flowers, pictures, beautiful faces, and
music set stirring emotions within me, in which it seemed that I saw
hidden away in the depths of my own heart the shining form of a
white-robed soul-maiden, who cried out to me: 'Ah, cannot you make your
life as pure and beautiful as the flowers and the music, that so you may
set me free?'

"But I chose the ignoble part, and gave myself up, body and soul, to
evil and unbel