ify his life, might
help this man whom he loved, to peace. The breath he caught was a
prayer; his strong, nervous fingers trembled. He spoke in a tone whose
concentration lifted the eyes below him, that brooded, stared.

"I can't bear it to stand by and see you go under, when there's help
close. You said that if you could believe that they were living, that
you would have them again, you would be perfectly happy no matter how
many years you must wait. They are living as sure as I am here, and as
sure as Jack was here, and Jack's mother. They are living still. Perhaps
they're close to you now. You've bound a bandage over your eyes, you've
covered the vision of your spirit, so that you can't see; but that
doesn't make nothingness of God's world. It's there--here--close,
maybe. A more real world than this--this little thing." With a boyish
gesture he thrust behind him the universe. "What do we know about the
earth, except effects upon our consciousness? It's all a matter of
inference--you know that better than I. The thing we do know beyond
doubt is that we are each of us a something that suffers and is happy.
How is that something the same as the body--the body that gets old
and dies--how can it be? You can't change thought into matter--not
conceivably--everybody acknowledges that. Why should the thinking part
die then, because the material part dies? When the organ is broken is
the organist dead? The body is the hull, the covering, and when it has
grown useless it will fall away and the live seed in it will stand free
to sunlight and air--just at the beginning of life, as a plant is when
it breaks through earth in the spring. It's the seed in the ground,
and it's the flower in the sunlight, but it's the same thing--the same
life--it is--it _is_." The boy's intensity of conviction shot like
a flame across the quiet room.

"It is the same thing with us too. The same spirit-substance underlies
both worlds and there is no separation in space, only in view-point.
Life goes on--it's just transfigured. It's as if a bandage should be
lifted from our eyes and we should suddenly see things in whose presence
we had been always."

The rushing, eager voice stopped. He bent and laid his hand on the older
man's and stared at his face, half hidden now in the shadows of the
lowering fire. There was no response. The heavy head did not lift and
the attitude was unstirred, hopeless. As if struck by a blow he sprang
erect and his fingers