‘Oh, but they don’t die at all,’ cried Isabel. ‘Very few people are great and holy enough to die. Nine people out of ten just change shapes and go on again. You can tell that by the fuss they make. One always fusses more when one harries about at a junction than when one arrives at a terminus. Most people, when they come to die, are simply getting out of one train and into another on their journey. Arriving at the end is a much more simple solemn business. That is what I mean by dying. And for that one needs a splendid stage. It is a far leap into Nirvana, and if one is to make it, one wants a good take-off, a running jump from a strong springy board, with nothing to trammel one and lessen one’s movements. To hop along into another mean little manifestation, as most people do, requires very little outside help. It is hardly more than a shuffle from one bed to another. One does not want any spring-board for that.’ ‘I expect,’ said Kingston, ‘that a vast number of quiet good people reach Nirvana without big jumps or spring-boards, or anything of the sort. They go on living obscure, kindly lives, and then, at the end of everything, they just gently slip away and cease, and enter Nirvana without any splash at all.’ ‘Ah, those are the people who go on the great journey without luggage. But the average person takes any amount of packages and parcels with him, all kinds of fears and fusses and hopes and terrors. And the reason why he makes such a to-do whenever he has to change trains or carriages is because he is so afraid he may leave one of the precious bundles behind. He thinks they are his individuality, just as a decent woman thinks that her clothes are hers. In fact, scarcely anyone can conceive an idea of himself without his trappings. And so, all along the Great Railway, you have people wailing and shrinking at the thought of death. They know, in their heart of hearts, that at each change they leave one or two of the bundles behind--a fear or a hate or a habit--and they cannot understand that they can continue to be themselves without the bundles. They think, as I said, that the bundles are an essential part of themselves; whereas it is not till one has gradually shed all one’s bundles that one can hope to arrive, one’s own real unhampered self, at the Terminus. It is only the Self that is meant to arrive, not the bundles. They are the common property of all, like clothes and rugs and umbrellas, but each man’s self is a lone, isolated thing.’ She spoke with her usual fire, urgently, with hands lavishly waved, and blazing eyes. Gundred, quite out of the talk, left behind in the lower world, looked on with bewildered disapproval. ‘Travelling is a great trouble--yes?’ she hazarded. ‘I always have as little luggage as possible.’