“It is beautiful!” I cried enthusiastically. “It is the most practical, comforting, progressive religion I ever heard of. You _do_ love one another--you _do_ bear one another’s burdens--you _do_ realize that a little child is a type of the kingdom of heaven. You are more Christian than any people I ever saw. But--how about death? And the life everlasting? What does your religion teach about eternity?” “Nothing,” said Ellador. “What is eternity?” What indeed? I tried, for the first time in my life, to get a real hold on the idea. “It is--never stopping.” “Never stopping?” She looked puzzled. “Yes, life, going on forever.” “Oh--we see that, of course. Life does go on forever, all about us.” “But eternal life goes on _without dying_.” “The same person?” “Yes, the same person, unending, immortal.” I was pleased to think that I had something to teach from our religion, which theirs had never promulgated. “Here?” asked Ellador. “Never to die--here?” I could see her practical mind heaping up the people, and hurriedly reassured her. “Oh no, indeed, not here--hereafter. We must die here, of course, but then we ‘enter into eternal life.’ The soul lives forever.” “How do you know?” she inquired. “I won’t attempt to prove it to you,” I hastily continued. “Let us assume it to be so. How does this idea strike you?” Again she smiled at me, that adorable, dimpling, tender, mischievous, motherly smile of hers. “Shall I be quite, quite honest?” “You couldn’t be anything else,” I said, half gladly and half a little sorry. The transparent honesty of these women was a never-ending astonishment to me. “It seems to me a singularly foolish idea,” she said calmly. “And if true, most disagreeable.” Now I had always accepted the doctrine of personal immortality as a thing established. The efforts of inquiring spiritualists, always seeking to woo their beloved ghosts back again, never seemed to me necessary. I don’t say I had ever seriously and courageously discussed the subject with myself even; I had simply assumed it to be a fact. And here was the girl I loved, this creature whose character constantly revealed new heights and ranges far beyond my own, this superwoman of a superland, saying she thought immortality foolish! She meant it, too. “What do you _want_ it for?” she asked. “How can you _not_ want it!” I protested. “Do you want to go out like a candle? Don’t you want to go on and on--growing and--and--being happy, forever?” “Why, no,” she said. “I don’t in the least. I want my child--and my child’s child--to go on--and they will. Why should _I_ want to?” “But it means Heaven!” I insisted. “Peace and Beauty and Comfort and Love--with God.” I had never been so eloquent on the subject of religion. She could be horrified at Damnation, and question the justice of Salvation, but Immortality--that was surely a noble faith.