He spoke.  ’You say when a man dies he is divided into two parts—­the body that rots and the part “that lives elsewhere."’ He was speaking very slowly and distinctly.  ’If that part of a man which lives goes to Heaven, where everything is quite different from this, he could have no use for most of his thoughts—­what we call opinions, for they are formed on what he sees, and hears, and feels here.  Look here!’—­he held out his arm and moved it up and down from the elbow—­’there are nerves and muscles; behind them is something we call life—­we don’t know what it is.  And behind your thoughts and feeling there is the same life—­we don’t know what it is.  The part of you that you say goes to Heaven must be that life.  If you ask me what I think, I think the greater part of what you call mind is part of your body.  If your body can live a spirit life, so can it; but it would need as much changing first.’

It was most extraordinary to him to see the avidity with which she drank in his words, and also the intelligence with which she seemed to master them, for she cried—­

‘What’s i’ the soael then?  When ye will to do a thing agen all costs, is that i’ the soael?’

’Certainly the spirit must be the self, and the will, as far as we know, is that self—­more that self than anything else is.’  He spoke in the pleased tone of a schoolmaster who finds that the mind beneath his touch is being moulded into the right shape; and besides he supposed he could question her next.

‘I knowed that,’ she said, with an intensity of conviction that confounded her listener, ‘I knowed the soael was will.’

‘It must be intelligence, and will, and probably memory,’ he said, beguiled into the idea that she was interested in the nicety of his theory, ’but not in any sense that activity of mind which shows itself in the opinions most men conceive so important.’

But of this she took no heed.  ’When a man’s off his head or par’lysed, wi’ no more life in him than babe unborn—­yet when he’s living and not dead—­where’s his soael then?  Parson he says the soael’s sleeping inside him afore going to glory, like a grub afore it turns into a fly; but I asked him how he knowed, and he just said he knowed, an’ I mun b’lieve, and that’s no way to answer an honest woman.’

‘He did not really know.’

‘Well, tell what you knows,’ she said.

‘Indeed, I do not know anything about it.’

‘Ye doaen’t know!’

‘I do not know.’

The animation of hope slowly faded from her face, giving place to a look of bitter disappointment.  It was as if a little child, suddenly denied some darling wish, should have strength to restrain its tears and mutely acquiesce in the inevitable.

‘Then there’s nowt to say,’ she said, rising, sullen in the first moment of pain.

‘But you’ll tell me why you have asked?’ he begged; ’I am very sorry indeed that I cannot answer.’