“Yes, Arthur, I have made up my mind to lose you for this life as a fitting reward for my folly.  But do not think that I do so without a pang, for, believe me, since my mind emerged stronger and clearer from the storms through which it has passed, bringing back to me the full life and strength of my womanhood, I have longed for you with an ever-increasing longing.  I am not ashamed to own that I would give worlds to feel your arms about me and your kiss upon my lips.  Why should I be?  Am I not yours, body and soul?

“But, dear, it has been given to me, perhaps as a compensation for all I have undergone and that is still left for me to undergo, to grasp a more enduring end than that of earthly ecstasy:  for I can look forward with a confident assurance to the day when we shall embrace upon the threshold of the Infinite.  Do not call this foolish imagination, or call it imagination, if you will—­for what is imagination?  Is it not the connecting link between us and our souls, and recalling memories of our home.  Imagination, what would our higher life be without it?  It is what the mind is to the body, it is the soul’s thought.

“So in my imagination—­since I know no better term—­I foresee that heavenly hour, and I am not jealous for the earthly moment.  Nor, indeed, have I altogether lost you, for at times, in the stillness of the night, when the earthly part is plunged in sleep and my spirit is released from the thraldom of the senses, it, at indefinite periods, has the power to summon your beloved form to its presence, and in this communion Nature vindicates her faithfulness.  Thus, through the long night rest comes upon me with your presence.

“And at last there will come a greater rest; at last—­having lived misunderstood—­we shall die, alone, and then the real life or lives will begin.  It is not always night, for the Dawn is set beyond the night, and through the gates of Dawn we shall journey to the day.  It is not always night; even in the womb of darkness throbs the promise of the morning.  I often wonder, Arthur, how and what this change will be.  Shall we be even as we are, but still, through unnumbered ages, growing slowly on to the Divine, or, casting off the very semblance of mortality, shall we rise at one wide sweep to the pinnacle of fulfilled time, there to learn the purposes and mark the measure of all Being.

“How can I know?  But this I believe, that whatever the change, however wide and deep the darkness which stretches between what is and what is not yet, we cannot lose ourselves therein.  Identity will still be ours, and memory, the Janus-headed, will still pursue us, calling to our minds the enacted evil and that good which, having been, must always be.  For we are immortal, and though we put off the mortal dress —­yes, though our forms become as variable as the clouds, and assume proportions of which we cannot dream—­yet shall memory companion us and identity remain.  For we are