Under the spell of the wordless pain in the glorious eyes, her heroic friend flung her arms about her, crying, “Cartice! Cartice! My dear one! I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it!” And together they wept tears of such anguish as only the strong ever weep. For a few days the heart-breaking look continued in Cartice’s eyes; but in the silence of the night help came from the great source, and she got up one morning with peace shining in her face. “Often in the past,” she said to Lilla, “I have wished I could die and be out of trouble. But now I want to live: now I know that dying doesn’t put us out of trouble. We must grow out of it by evolving above it, learning to master it. “Most of my life, as I look back upon it, seems to have been mere blind groping. Now, when I think I have learned how to live, the business of life is done. And I have learned how to work in a way that never would meet failure; but that, too, is done. “And yet, in spite of the mystery and the grimness of it, something tells me all is well; that nothing can be lost; that what I have learned will be useful somewhere. Perhaps we are here for the purpose of learning how to live and work. When that is accomplished, we must go on and learn other things, and we can take no other road than the one we have named Death, and painted black. But you and I know that it leads into light, and, though we die, we shall continue to live, and shall evolve, unfold and expand, even ‘it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ “Yet knowing this--for we have knowledge, not simply belief--there are moments when a childish terror seizes me. But why should I fear? Millions have traveled the same road, the timid and faint-hearted as well as the bold and brave, and all went forth alone. We say alone, because we see no visible companions go with them; yet we know that no one is ever alone, either here or on that inscrutable journey, or at its end. “But notwithstanding all I have learned of the life to follow this, I cannot picture it--cannot form any clear idea of it. Nor can I realize that life as I know it now must end. I try to think of the days to come when I shall not be here, nor be anywhere as I am now, and when the form through which I act will have vanished utterly from the face of the earth, but I cannot! I cannot! “I am always I in consciousness, always existing, never dead, never different. Is it not the mystery of mysteries? “I try to imagine a time when I may come here to our little home and be unseen by you, unable to lift a book, flutter a curtain or speak one word that you can hear; but I cannot. How inconceivable it is that in a short time I shall be in a condition so different from this that imagination itself cannot paint it!” Cartice awoke from sleep one day with a loud cry, a wail of terror that went to the heart. “What is it, dear?” asked Lilla, bending over her.