"You have chosen them among the living," Mr. Symeon answered in a voice that thrilled her. "Do you think that Tennyson is dead? He who knew that the whole question of religion hinges upon the after life: immortality or a godless universe. Or Browning, who has gone to the very core of religion, whose magnificent mind grasped the highest and deepest in Divine love and Divine power? Such spirits are unquenchable. This rag of mortality upon which they hang must lie in the dust, but for the elect death is only the release of the immaterial from the material, the escape of the butterfly from the worm. You have the assurance from the lips of Christ: God is the God of the living; and for those whose existence on earth is only the apprenticeship to immortality, there is no such thing as death." This was the chief article in Mr. Symeon's creed; hinted at, but not formally stated in his contributions to the magazine which he edited. He claimed immortality only for the elect--for those in whom the spirit predominated over the flesh. To Vera there was no new idea in his exposition of faith. She had a feeling that she had always known this, from the time she stood beside Shelley's grave in the shadow of the Roman Cenotaph, and that other grave under the hill, the resting-place of Shelley's Adonais. The thought of corruption had been far from her mind, albeit she knew that the heart of one poet and the wasted form of the other were lying in the darkness below those spring flowers on which her tears were falling, and it was no surprise to her to hear a serious man of sixty years of age declare his faith in the unbroken chain of life. "I saw that you were not one of those who scoff at transcendental truths," Mr. Symeon said, after a few moments' silence. "I read in your eyes last night that you are one of us in spirit, though you may know nothing of our creed. You must join our society." "Your society?" "Yes, Madame Provana. We are a company of friends in the world of sense and in the world of spirit. The majority of us have crossed the river. As corporal substance they have ceased to be; their dwelling is in the starlit spaces beyond Acheron. For the common herd they are dead; but for us they are as vividly alive as they were when they walked among the vulgar living, and wore life's vesture of clay. They are nearer to us since they have passed the gulf, and we understand them as we never could while they wore the livery of earth. They are our close companions. The veil that parted us is rent, and we see them face to face." Vera listened in silence, and the grave, slow speech went on without a break.