“Indeed!” I gasped, with my breath almost gone,—“and when may it come to pass?” Looking up, I dropped the tone of raillery I had been using immediately, for I saw it was a serious matter to him; and overcome by astonishment, I subsided into complete silence. The perfume of roses came in on the breeze, and a scarlet-cloaked flower-girl carrying her wares, the only person on the street, turned out of sight. A small bird, with red plumes in its wings, lighted nearly within reach, upon the tree, and broke into song, but, checking the strain almost in the first note, it flew away, settling, a mere speck, upon the northern spire of the Cathedral. Then Reinhart said, as though there had been no pause in the conversation,— “I do not know; it may never come in this life.” I looked at him, thoroughly puzzled, almost frightened. Then, thinking perhaps I had not heard aright, said,—“What?” But, without heeding my interrogation, he continued,— “Perhaps it never will come in this life.” Yes, I had heard aright. Possibly we were each talking of different things; and as a last resource, I said,— “Perhaps _what_ will never come in this life?” “Why, love,” he replied, making a slight gesture of impatience, as though I had been unpardonably dull. “But,” I persisted, determined to understand, “then it will never be at all, for they neither marry nor are given in marriage in the next world.” “No,” he repeated, “they ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage.’” He said the words over slowly but mechanically, exactly as if he might have said, or thought, the same words over a hundred times before. That he believed in the immortality of the soul, I quite well knew, for it was the one shoot of his English education, which, springing in early boyhood, had survived, like a foreign plant, amid all the German sophisms. I did not like the strange aspect of his face, and, somewhat ill at ease, I said,— “Then, what do you mean?” I waited a moment for the answer. “I can hardly tell you. I have always had a theory of my own—no, not a theory, a belief. I have never undertaken to express it in language, and do not know whether I can render myself intelligible. I think every soul has somewhere in the universe an affinity—I am obliged to use the word for lack of a better one—and I believe that before complete happiness can be attained the two are merged into one. It is not marriage: that is purely earthly. These affinities may possibly meet in this life, though it is hardly probable; but in the ages to come it will occur just as certainly as there is an eternity. Mind, I do not call it marriage. It is the fusing together of two souls, a masculine and feminine, just as they combine chemicals, producing a new substance. I believe, as I said, these two souls may sometimes meet in this life; but it is a destiny that comes to few in centuries, and those few should kneel in everlasting gratitude before their Creator.”