“I know that well, Lilla. Woe be to those who have outraged their ideal on that day, when their souls shall meet it face to face. I have sinned against mine, and have met its accusing eyes already. But now I have begun my atonement, and am eager to go on with it. There is joy in creating what we wish to create--that means giving form to our ideals.” But Lilla was silent, wondering what ideals her friend would follow in that country into which flesh and blood can never enter. In her eyes Lilla saw the strange light that flames up only when the end of the journey is near; and on her face, and in all that she said and did was a hint of imminent change, plain to others, unseen by herself. In the Sanscrit is a story of one who asked what is the most wonderful thing in the world. The answer is that every man should believe that all shall die but himself. The reason of this is that he shall not die, and his soul knows it. Remember this, you who see your beloved going down into what we call Death’s Valley, serene, hopeful, unconscious of their doom. They are wiser than you. They know they shall not die. CHAPTER XXIV. WHO ARE THEY? “Who are they that are compelled to recommence the same existence?” “They who fail in the fulfilment of their mission, or in the endurance of the trial appointed to them.” --_Allan Kardec._ If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain; They little know the subtle ways I keep and pass and turn again. --_Ralph Waldo Emerson._ Personally I must confess to one small weakness. I cannot help thinking that the souls toward whom we feel drawn in this life are the very souls whom we knew and loved in a former life, and that the souls who repel us here, we do not know why, are the souls that earned our disapproval, the souls from whom we kept aloof in a former life.--_F. Max Müller._ Months on swift wing slipped away. Cartice’s pen was busy every day, and every day she delighted more and more in her work, because she was saying what she wished to say, was expressing herself fearlessly and freely. New plans of action fairly rioted in her brain. Plans! When had they ever worked for her? There are persons who mark out everything ahead, and Fate lets them live their arrangements to the letter, but Cartice was not one of them. The lamp of the spirit, which tells unutterable things, now burned in her eyes, with an unearthly brightness, throwing its touching radiance over all her words and deeds; but she did not understand. She alone saw not the heavenly illumination. But one day the imminent change was made plain to her, though how she never told. Coming to Lilla, with whitened face, and the old-time, all-compelling appeal in her eyes, which neither man nor woman could see without a bursting heart, she said: “I must soon leave you. It has been shown me and I understand.”