The dream was with him still; the woman who was his friend was not separated from him by years — only that very night he had seen her. He looked up into the night sky that all his life long had mingled itself with his existence. There were a thousand faces that he loved looking down at him, a thousand stars in their glory, in crowns, and circles, and solitary grandeur. To the man they were not less dear than to the boy; they had been not less mysterious; yet he looked up at them and shuddered; at last turned away from them with horror. Such countless multitudes, stretching out far into space, and yet not in one of them all was she! Though he searched through them all, to the farthest, faintest point of light, nowhere should he ever say, “She is here!” To-morrow’s sun would rise and gild the world’s mountains, and shine into its thousand valleys; it would set and the stars creep out again. Year after year, century after century, the old changes of Nature would go on, day and night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest; but in none of them all would she have part!

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?