"Then I'm not being punished for my sins?" He asked the question in some uneasiness. "You are. Don't you see? The punishment is that you're not more advanced. You've been like the idle boy in school; and now you find it hard to catch up. If it were not for the great thing you've done you'd be farther behind than you are." "The great thing I've done? I don't understand you." "Every good act helps us onward; and among things that are good love is the greatest. Of that you've given the highest proof there is." Lester was astounded. "I?" "You gave the most precious things you had--your business, your happiness, your family, your wife, your life. You held nothing back. You not only gave without reserve, but you gave without complaining. You didn't do it for yourself, but for a great cause--as men conceive of causes--and you did it of your own free will." "And so did you." "No; I waited to be taken. If I hadn't been taken I shouldn't have gone. I didn't offer myself up; I was seized against my will. You were the more like Jesus of Nazareth, Who laid down His life for His friends, and so, as He said Himself, losing your life you have found it." "Oh, but I didn't do it in that way at all," Lester protested. "It doesn't take anything away from right that we do it as a matter of course. We don't have to know the infinite intelligence to have the infinite intelligence know us. Isn't it a case of 'He that doeth the Will'? If we do the Will instinctively we can't fail of the protection of Him whose Will is done; and if we don't know Him already we can be sure He will make Himself known." Communication once more came to an end, not abruptly, but by natural cessation, because the thought had been expressed. But Lester was left with a clue to follow, and little by little he followed it. The immediate gain was a new kind of perception. It was as if some faculty already possessed, but paralyzed within him, had been freed. He could not have said that this endowment existed in hearing, or sight, or any of the senses, or in all of them together, or in none of them. All he could say was that it gave him a new use of power, of power to which he had a right, but of which, for a reason that escaped him, he had hitherto been deprived. CHAPTER IV As with this power there came freedom, expansion, and growth, he found himself able to reconstruct out of thought the house he had formerly called home. He was back in it all at once--without effort, without coming from a distance, without journeying through space, without meeting the discords between timelessness and time. He was simply there, walking about the rooms and halls as he had done ever since his childhood.