"There is no accounting. If all the priests in Christendom tell you so, believe them not. Do you think God keeps a score against you? Do you think the future is some torture chamber, or condemned cell? Oh, how you wrong God!" "But we are taught, Annie, that the future must correct the past." "True, but the future, like the present, is a school--only a school. And the Great Master is so compassionate, so ready to help, so ready to enlighten, so sure to make out of our foolishness some wise thing. If we learn the lesson we came here to learn, He will say to us 'Well done'--and then we shall go higher." "If we do not learn it?" "Ah then, we are turned back to try it over again! I should not like to be turned back--would you?" "But He will punish us for failure." "Our earthly fathers are often impatient with us; His compassions fail not. Oh this good God!" she cried in an ecstasy--"Oh that I knew where I might find Him! Oh that I could come into His presence!" and her eyes dilated, and were full of an incomparable joy, as if they were gazing upon some glorious vision, and glad with the gladness of the angels. Hyde looked at her with an intense interest. He wondered if this angelic little creature had ever known the frailties and temptations of mortal life, and she answered his thought as if he had spoken it aloud. "Yes, cousin, I have known all temptations, and come through all tribulations. My soul has wandered and lost its way, and been brought back many and many a time, and bought every grace with much suffering. But God is always present to help, while quest followed quest, and lesson followed lesson, and goal succeeded goal; ever leaving some evil behind, and carrying forward some of those gains which are eternal." "If Adam had not fallen!" sighed George, "things might have been so different." "But the angels fell before Adam," she answered. "I wonder if Adam knew about the fallen angels? Did he know about death before he saw Abel dead? He was all day in the garden of Eden after eating of the fruit of sin and death, and yet he did not put out his hand to take of the Tree of Life. Did he know that he was already immortal? Was he--and are we--fallen angels, working our way back to our first estate through many trials and much suffering? Doctor Roslyn talked to me of these things till I thought I felt wings stirring within me. Wings! Wings! Wings to fly away and be at rest. Wings! they have been the dream of every race and every age. Are they a memory of our past greatness, for they haunt us, and draw us on and on, and higher and higher?--but why do you look so troubled and reluctant?"