“No,” said she quietly. “It is all written in you, by you, yourself, Lord Fearing—written plainly for him to see, just as when an old tree is cut down, the whole history of its life is found written plainly in its heart in the rings formed during each separate year of its life. One who knows how to read it can understand at a glance about the years when it was buffeted by the great storms and could scarcely make any growth, and those years when it was diseased, and those when it went forward and became strong. Or, if the heart has been eaten away little by little by worms and grubs, it all becomes plain when the tree falls and is found to be hollow and dead. You have been inscribing your whole inner life yourself as plainly as possible. And he, the one whom you despise and reject, the Lord of life and love, is the Judge who will have to read what is written in you and to pass sentence upon its worth or worthlessness.”

The old man groaned. “Don’t stand there telling me these horrible things,” he gasped at last. “What’s the good of saying all that now at the end of life?”

“Why,” exclaimed she earnestly, taking a step forward, “why, Lord Fearing, if you asked him he would plant the seed of new life and love in your heart even now, and then it would grow and come to fruition in that other world. Then it won’t matter at all about your body. We are to receive new bodies which cannot die. Listen!” and she sang these words:

An empty altar is each soul

Whereon the Eternal Love

Would place a quenchless, living coal

From his own heart of love;

To burn and yearn back whence it came

To union with the parent flame.

Yes, every soul a temple is

Wherein love plans to dwell,

And each must make its choice for this—

To be a heaven or hell.

If empty left, hell is its plight;

But heaven, when God and man unite.

Christ is the Living, Purging Flame,

And thou the altar art;

Forth from the love of God he came,

And seeks thine empty heart.

Receive this Lord from heaven above,

In these to live his life of love.

“The life of love!” sneered the old man, and then groaned again. “Why do you keep on harping on love?”

“It is the law of the universe,” said she, “the law of existence. Everything that loves, lives for ever. Everything else perishes.”

“What is love?” groaned he. “I know precious little about it.”