Even in hell (I use the word as indicating mental or physical suffering—­in my case, the former—­not with any local significance) there are moments when the anguish-stricken spirit is mercifully allowed a temporary reprieve.  Such a moment occurred after the first awful paroxysm of self-loathing and torture which I experienced when my past life was made known to me in its true colours, and it was in this saner and comparatively painless interval that I met one whom I had known on earth as a woman of the purest life and character.  Being still under the impression that I was in hell in the sense in which I had been accustomed to think of that place, I started back upon seeing her, and cried out in astonishment, “You here! You!  And in Hades!”

“Where else should I be except where Arthur is?” she answered quietly, and I then remembered a worthless brother of that name to whom she was passionately attached.  “Even Dives in the parable,” she went on, “was unable to forget the five brethren he had left behind him, and cried out amid the flames, asking that Lazarus be sent to warn them, lest they, too, came to that place of torment.  Is it likely, then, that any wife, mother, or sister, worthy the name, would be content to remain idle in heaven, knowing that a loved one was in hell and in agony?  We are told that after His death Christ preached to the spirits in prison, and I believe that He came here to hell in search of the so-called lost.”

“Tell me,” I said, “you who are in heaven, if you are perfectly happy.”

“You are not altogether wrong in calling this heaven,” she replied, “although it is little more than the antechamber between earth and heaven.  It is my heaven at present, but it will not be my heaven always, any more than it will be always your hell, and although it is heaven, it is not the heaven.  When I was on earth, I longed for heaven, not that I might be delivered from sorrow, but from sinfulness; and I think I may say that I am as happy here as my failures will let me be.”

“Your failures!” I exclaimed.  “I thought we had done with failures.”

“You remember the text in the Koran,” she said. “’Paradise is under the shadow of swords.’  Here, as on earth, there is no progress without effort, and here, too, there are difficulties to be overcome.  Yet even on earth there was one element in the strife which lent dignity even to our failures.  Sin and shame are, after all, only human; the effort and determination to overcome them are divine.  Ceasing to be an angel, Satan became a devil.  Man falls, and even in his fall retains something of God.”

After a time we fell to talking of the past, and, mentioning the name of the very noblest man I have ever known, a man who made possible the purity of Sir Galahad, made possible the courage of Coeur de Lion—­I had almost said made possible the sinfulness of Christ—­I inquired whether she had seen him in Paradise.