Stillness, and food, and brief snatches of sleep somewhat restored Erica. Late in the afternoon she was strong enough to go into her mother's room, for that last look so inexpressibly painful to all, so entirely void of hope or comfort to those who believe in no hereafter. Not even the peacefulness of death was there to give even a slight, a momentary relief to her pain; she scarcely even recognized her mother. Was that, indeed, all that was left? That pale, rigid, utterly changed face and form? Was that her mother? Could that once have been her mother? Very often had she heard this great change wrought by death referred to in discussions; she knew well the arguments which were brought forward by the believers in immortality, the counter arguments with which her father invariably met them, and which had always seemed to her conclusive. But somehow that which seemed satisfactory in the lecture hall did not answer in the room of death. Her whole being seemed to flow out into one longing question: Might there not be a Beyond--an Unseen? Was this world indeed only “A place to stand and love in for an hour, With darkness and the death-hour rounding it?” She had slept in the afternoon, but at night, when all was still, she could not sleep. The question still lurked in her mind; her sorrow and loneliness grew almost unbearable. She thought if she could only make herself cry again perhaps she might sleep, and she took down a book about Giordano Bruno, and read the account of his martyrdom, an account which always moved her very much. But tonight not even the description of the valiant unshrinking martyr of Free-thought ascending the scaffold to meet his doom could in the slightest degree affect her. She tried another book, this time Dickens's “Tale of Two Cities.” She had never read the last two chapters without feeling a great desire to cry, but tonight she read with perfect unconcern of Sydney Carton's wanderings through Paris on the night before he gave himself up--read the last marvelously written scene without the slightest emotion. It was evidently no use to try anything else; she shut the book, put out her candle, and once more lay down in the dark. Then she began to think of the words which had so persistently haunted Sydney Carton: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” She, too, seemed to be wandering about the Parisian streets, hearing these words over and over again. She knew that it was Jesus of Nazareth who had said this. What an assertion it was for a man to make! It was not even “I BRING the resurrection,” or “I GIVE the resurrection,” but “I AM the Resurrection.” And yet, according to her father, his humility had been excessive, carried almost to a fault. Was he the most inconsistent man that ever lived, or what was he? At last she thought she would get up and see whether there was any qualifying context, and when and where he had uttered this tremendous saying.