When her own time came, as it did soon after, she met death with the same fearless, friendly courage. Her thoughts were wholly for those who were to stay, and she was even playful in urging upon me never to leave Ronald and the children, but learn to “take her place.” I own I was troubled at times by what seemed almost levity in the face of death, till I began by degrees to realise her point of view. “I think it will be a very short distance,” she said, “perhaps into another room, perhaps not even so far as that; and the time (to me, at any rate) will certainly seem short—no longer than the night of sleep which separates us from our loved ones till the morning.” And of the future she had no fear. “Nothing,” she said, “could persuade me that the light which has been fanned and quickened here will be extinguished for ever by the incident we call death. The jest would be too horribly, inconceivably malicious. Yet our choice lies between this and the crowning impossibility of a self-created world.” Not thoughtlessly, but in the hope of finding a standing ground for myself, I would ask her sometimes if she had no misgivings regarding the re-existence of the body, and mutual recognition, and the endless difficulties that centre round the subject. “None,” she answered, “none. Why should I? Look at the natural world. I know that space must be either limited or limitless; but can I form a conception of either alternative? Yet the problem may be simplicity itself to some larger mind than ours. So why trouble myself about difficulties which may be easier of solution still to those who hold the key? And you think it hard, I know—you have often said so—that many should die, as we know they must, without a friend on earth to whom they can look forward for a welcome when they reach the further shore. To me, I confess, it seems quite the contrary. Surely the burst of welcome will be greater in their ears than in ours, who have lived surrounded by friends, and never known the dearth of sympathy.” And every difficulty, as I raised it, she met with the same calm, unquestioning certainty.