"Are you quite sure," he returned, in a low voice, "that it does not affect you as deeply?" He looked at me as if he knew my whole life, which he could not have known; and, in spite of a violent effort to suppress my feelings, I was conscious that I betrayed the agitation into which I was thrown by that searching look. "Come, come," he exclaimed, rallying wildly, "we have both looked death in the face before now; and although use can not make it familiar, still a sight often repeated must lose some of its horrors." "No, you are wrong. I have not seen death often." "Once--only once," he replied, in the same hollow voice; "but you have seen many deaths in one." "How do you know that?" I demanded; "or assume to know it?" "One day you shall learn," he answered, calmly. "You amaze me. Speak openly to me, Forrester, and not in these dark enigmas. I can bear to hear." "Can you bear to suffer?" he asked. "I can--I think I can," I replied, shrinking at my heart from the ordeal I invited. "I have suffered that which I should once have thought utterly fabulous, and beyond human endurance." "I know it. But endurance has its limits. The earthly can bear only that which is of the earth--test them with sufferings that look out beyond this world into the darkness of eternity, and they perish. The trial is not in those things that are dated, bounded, and finite: it is where speculation can not reach nor reason avail us, where human knowledge and human strength are blind and idle, that the trial of that suffering begins, which is akin to the penalties of immortal spirits--a beginning without an end." "I do not understand you," I answered. "You _will_ understand me, however, when the hour arrives." Then stopping short, he whispered, "they are observing us; this is not the place for such a theme. We shall meet again, when you shall be satisfied." "When?" "Soon--I fear too soon. No matter--we shall meet, and you shall be satisfied." He rose and left the room. I was restrained from following him only by the consideration that I should expose myself to the criticisms of our companions, who, I had observed, were fond of making merry at the expense of their absent friends; and as I was beginning to feel very sensitive to ridicule, I determined not to give them an opportunity of exercising their wit upon me.