“Suppose,” began Christopher again, “one claiming to be a prophet appeared, saying that in the life to come we were to go on living just such a life as here, with the one difference that we should be no longer deluded with the idea of something better, that all our energies would then be, and ought now to be spent in making the best of what we had—without any foolish indulgence in hope or aspiration.”

They emerged from the wood, the bare moor spread on all sides before them, and lo, the sunset was countless miles away! Hills, fields, rivers, mountains, lay between! Christopher stopped, and turning, looked at Hester.

“Is this the reality?” he said. “We catch sight of the gate of heaven, and set out for it. It comes nearer and nearer. All at once a something they call a reality of life comes between, and the shining gate is millions of miles away!”

He was silent. They were on the top of the ridge. A little beyond stood the dusky group of their companions. And the world lay beneath them. At length they saw the major approaching them.

“Who would live in London who might live here?” he said.

“No one,” answered Hester and Christopher together.

The major looked at them almost in alarm.

“But I may not,” said Hester. “God chooses that I live in London.”

“Christ would surely have liked better to go on living in his father’s house,” said Christopher, “than go where so many did not know either him or his father! But he could not go on enjoying his heaven while those many lived only a death in life. He must go and start them for home! Who in any measure seeing what Christ sees and feeling as Christ feels, would rest in the enjoyment of beauty while so many are unable to desire it? We are not real human beings until we are of the same mind with Christ. There are many who would save the interesting, but let the ugly and unlovely take care of themselves! Not so Christ, nor those who have learned of him!”

Christopher spoke in quiet contrast to the fervour of his words.

“I would take as many in with me,” he said, turning to Hester, “as I might, should it be after a thousand years I went in at the gate of the sunset—the sunrise rather, of which the sunset is a leaf of the folding door! It would be sorrow to go in alone. My people, my own, my own humans, my men, my women, my little ones, must go in with me!”

And so the two did return from those peaceful valleys and hills to London, to the men and women and children who drew their hearts.