Still she gazed; and something in her look called to something dead in me. I shook my head feebly and closed my eyes; but through the shut lids her gaze commanded. “I have come to the end,” I persisted; “and if you do not understand, there is nothing left. I can’t try any more, and I won’t. Go away.” I gasped as I said it, and opened my eyes again. Her look pierced and held me like the point of a sword. I turned my head from side to side, shivering, but there was no escape. The dead thing in me stirred to life and dragged itself up to look truth in the face once more. “Yes,” I said, “It is true. I can’t because I won’t. I thought I wouldn’t because I couldn’t, but that is a lie. I can endure if I will—and if I can, I must. But will it never end?” She lifted her head a little. Her eyes shone, and a smile curved the sweet corners of her mouth. It was not the old, brave, happy laughter, but something wiser and more compelling—the overflow of an exhaustless joy. “You _know_,” I whispered. “You learned it even in your life down here. And to keep on trying is to conquer, isn’t it?—even though one fails with every breath. And the only irreparable calamity is to turn coward and quit.” Her face was heavenly sweet. “I must never send for you again?” I asked, like a child. “Not to say things are hard, or to cry?—But if I play, in the real Make-Believe, will you talk to me there as you used? If I see you there I won’t need you this way again. Good-bye.” Her fingers brushed my hair once more as I lay back on the pillow; and then I knew she was gone.—O bravest friend! Not even in my own coward thoughts could your courage be bent to the service of fear; to think of you was to find strength, even against my will! For a long time I lay there, while the slow day passed and twilight deepened again into night. All her life passed before me—its selflessness, its courage, its joy. No creature that knew her went unblessed of her. What gifts pain brought, what power of helpfulness, what fullness of life and love! Suddenly, there in the deep stillness, it was as if the night were drawn away like a veil; and I saw out to the very edges of the world, and back into far-off ages, and on into days that are yet to be; and everywhere was light. And the light came from countless faces; and I knew that to each one pain had come—pain of body or pain of soul—and because of the pain they had found the light. And down, under the light, looking up to it, drawn by it, stumbling forward by it, were those to whom the vision had not come. And I—was I offered such a fellowship only to run away in fear? The veil of night fell dark again, but a song was in my heart. When daylight came I wrote it down—the song my friend had given me. It is called _THE INITIATES_