He shut the door to keep out their hideous shining, and because the dark was intolerable lit a candle, and paced the little room, faster and faster yet. He saw before him the long ages of eternity that would roll on, on, on, and never bring her. She would exist no more. A dark mist filled the little room.

“Oh, little hand! oh, little voice! oh, little form!” he cried; “oh, little soul that walked with mine! oh, little soul, that looked so fearlessly down into the depths, do you exist no more forever — for all time?” He cried more bitterly: “It is for this hour — this — that men blind reason, and crush out thought. For this hour — this, this — they barter truth and knowledge, take any lie, any creed, so it does not whisper to them of the dead that they are dead! Oh, God! God! for a Hereafter!”

Pain made his soul weak; it cried for the old faith. They are the tears that fall into the new-made grave that cement the power of the priest. For the cry of the soul that loves and loses is this, only this: “Bridge over Death; blend the Here with the Hereafter; cause the mortal to robe himself in immortality; let me not say of my Dead that it is dead! I will believe all else, bear all else, endure all else!”

Muttering to himself, Waldo walked with bent head, the mist in his eyes.

To the soul’s wild cry for its own there are many answers. He began to think of them. Was not there one of them all from which he might suck one drop of comfort?

“You shall see her again,” says the Christian, the true Bible Christian. “Yes; you shall see her again. ‘And I saw the dead, great and small, stand before God. And the books were opened, and the dead were judged from those things which were written in the books. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death.’ Yes; you shall see her again. She died so — with her knee unbent, with her hand unraised, with a prayer unuttered, in the pride of her intellect and the strength of her youth. She loved and she was loved; but she said no prayer to God; she cried for no mercy; she repented of no sin! Yes; you shall see her again.”

In his bitterness Waldo laughed low:

Ah, he had long ceased to hearken to the hellish voice.

But yet another speaks.

“You shall see her again,” says the nineteenth-century Christian, deep into whose soul modern unbelief and thought have crept, though he knows it not. He it is who uses his Bible as the pearl-fishers use their shells, sorting out gems from refuse; he sets his pearls after his own fashion, and he sets them well. “Do not fear,” he says; “hell and judgment are not. God is love. I know that beyond this blue sky above us is a love as widespreading over all. The All-Father will show her to you again; not spirit only — the little hands, the little feet you loved, you shall lie down and kiss them if you will. Christ arose, and did eat and drink; so shall she arise. The dead, all the dead, raised incorruptible! God is love. You shall see her again.”