The candle came floating toward us through the dark, and in a few moments Adam and Eve and Mara were with us. They greeted us with a quiet good-morning and a smile: they were used to such wakings! “I hope you have had a pleasant darkness!” said the Mother. “Not very,” I answered, “but the waking from it is heavenly.” “It is but begun,” she rejoined; “you are hardly yet awake!” “He is at least clothed-upon with Death, which is the radiant garment of Life,” said Adam. He embraced Lona his child, put an arm around me, looked a moment or two inquiringly at the princess, and patted the head of the leopardess. “I think we shall meet you two again before long,” he said, looking first at Lona, then at me. “Have we to die again?” I asked. “No,” he answered, with a smile like the Mother’s; “you have died into life, and will die no more; you have only to keep dead. Once dying as we die here, all the dying is over. Now you have only to live, and that you must, with all your blessed might. The more you live, the stronger you become to live.” “But shall I not grow weary with living so strong?” I said. “What if I cease to live with all my might?” “It needs but the will, and the strength is there!” said the Mother. “Pure life has no weakness to grow weary withal. THE Life keeps generating ours.--Those who will not die, die many times, die constantly, keep dying deeper, never have done dying; here all is upwardness and love and gladness.” She ceased with a smile and a look that seemed to say, “We are mother and son; we understand each other! Between us no farewell is possible.” Mara kissed me on the forehead, and said, gayly, “I told you, brother, all would be well!--When next you would comfort, say, ‘What will be well, is even now well.’” She gave a little sigh, and I thought it meant, “But they will not believe you!” “--You know me now!” she ended, with a smile like her mother’s. “I know you!” I answered: “you are the voice that cried in the wilderness before ever the Baptist came! you are the shepherd whose wolves hunt the wandering sheep home ere the shadow rise and the night grow dark!” “My work will one day be over,” she said, “and then I shall be glad with the gladness of the great shepherd who sent me.” “All the night long the morning is at hand,” said Adam. “What is that flapping of wings I hear?” I asked. “The Shadow is hovering,” replied Adam: “there is one here whom he counts his own! But ours once, never more can she be his!” I turned to look on the faces of my father and mother, and kiss them ere we went: their couches were empty save of the Little Ones who had with love’s boldness appropriated their hospitality! For an instant that awful dream of desolation overshadowed me, and I turned aside. “What is it, my heart?” said Lona. “Their empty places frightened me,” I answered. “They are up and away long ago,” said Adam. “They kissed you ere they went, and whispered, ‘Come soon.’”