They are in no more hurry than the stars. She tried to convey something, tentatively, at this point, which was really beyond both of us. It had to do with time (not as I understand time) being perhaps the most essential attribute of God (not as I was ever able to understand that word). Seeing my mental exhaustion, she gave up the effort, and later told me that the conception was extremely difficult for her, too--not only, I gathered, because of her youth and relative ignorance. There was also a hint that her father might not have wished her to bring my brain up to a hurdle like that one.... Of course they explored. Their little spaceships were roaming the ether before there was anything like man on Earth--roaming and listening, observing, recording; never entering nor taking part in the life of any home but their own. For five million years they even forbade themselves to go beyond their own solar system, though it would have been easy to do so. And in the following seven million years, although they traveled to incredible distances, the same stern restraint was held in force. It was altogether unrelated to what we should call fear. That, I think, is as extinct in them as hate. There was so much to do at home! I wish I could imagine it. They mapped the heavens, and played in their own sunlight. Naturally I cannot tell you what goodness is. I know only, moderately well, what it seems to mean to us human beings. It appears that the best of us can, often with enormous difficulty, however, achieve a manner of life in which goodness somewhat overbalances our aggressive, hostile tendencies for the greater part of the time. We are, in other words, a fraction alive; the rest is in the dark. Dante was a bitter masochist; Beethoven a frantic and miserable snob, Shakespeare wrote potboilers. And Christ said: "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." But give us fifty million years--I am no pessimist. After all, I've watched one-celled organisms on the slide, and listened to Brahms' Fourth. Night before last I said to the angel: "In spite of everything, you and I are kindred." She granted me agreement. * * * * * June 9 She was lying on my pillow this morning so that I could see her when I awoke. Her father has died, and she was with him when it happened. There was again that thought-impression which I could interpret only to mean that his life had been "saved." I was still sleep-bound when my mind asked: "What will you do?" "Stay with you, if you wish it, for the rest of your life." The last part of the message was clouded, but I am familiar with that now. It seems to mean there is some further element which eludes me. I could not be mistaken about the part I did receive. It gives me amazing speculations. Being only fifty-three, I might live another thirty or forty years.