ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 IJNTV, OP CAUF. T.TRTIAHY. T OS ANGF,T,ES
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 ONE 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 BY 
 
 H. FIELDING HALL 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' THT INWARD LIGHT,' KTC. 
 
 Nein fforfe 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1909 
 
 *dll rights reserved
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1909. 
 
 Xorinooti 
 
 J. 8. Gushing Co. Berwick <k Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 BOOK I 
 THE WEST 
 
 21.30316
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THERE are three loves that make and keep the 
 world the love that binds man and woman into 
 one flesh and soul, the love that draws families 
 into nations, the love that holds the world to God. 
 
 Each love is justified in its own Immortality. 
 
 All of our life that is worth the living is the ex- 
 pression of one or more of these loves; all our 
 religions are attempts to explain them; all our 
 hopes are in their immortalities. Therefore every 
 story that is not confined to the mere trappings 
 of to-day must proceed from them. 
 
 This book is about the first. 
 
 Venice at sunset, and a ship that came in from 
 the open sea. 
 
 They had left Trieste that morning, and all 
 the day had steamed across the sunlit sea. Upon 
 their right the Dolomites rose up to peaks of snow, 
 and in front the coast of Italy grew more and more 
 distinct. A mellow haze lay on the land and gave 
 
 3
 
 4 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 it sleepiness and an air of rest in contrast to the ever- 
 moving sea. And in the sunset they came near to 
 Venice. 
 
 At first they saw the long low island of the Lido, 
 and behind it the tops of towers and campaniles, 
 clear against the sky; but soon the ship passed into 
 the channel, and across the broad lagoons the city 
 stood revealed. 
 
 Who shall picture Venice thus seen beneath the 
 sunset glow ? She seemed no city built of men, 
 but rose from out the sea as Aphrodite rose; her 
 palaces and churches were made not of marble 
 nor of stone, but as if grown as pearls grow, under- 
 neath the waves. She was a sea-shell cast upon 
 the shore; the dying sun made pink and purple 
 glories on her, it turned the still lagoons to lakes 
 of molten gold. 
 
 They came still nearer, passing the gardens where 
 the trees still held their autumn leaves, and then 
 moved slowly to before Saint Mark's. 
 
 The great piazza opened. They could see the 
 wonderful cathedral; its bronze horses in the glow 
 were almost living. The campanile pointed like a 
 finger to the heavens. The steamer nearly stopped. 
 They looked they looked into the hollow of the 
 shell. The great chamber where its heart was wont 
 to live was filled with lustrous light and living shadow;
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 5 
 
 the Grand Canal glowed like a shining way that led 
 to heaven. 
 
 So to see Venice is to see her in her majesty and 
 truth to see her as her sons were wont to see 
 when they returned from voyage or victory; as am- 
 bassadors of foreign kings, who came to bring her 
 homage, saw her. Of all cities on the sea she is the 
 queen. To see her, then, is to remember her for 
 ever, and a great pity comes into your heart that 
 she is dead, and that the light which shines from 
 marble and from window is but lent from heaven, 
 and not the light of life. She lived and died, and 
 left her palaces for us to wonder at and try to under- 
 stand the soul that built them. 
 
 'Surely,' cried a man upon the deck, 'it was 
 some sacred fire within their hearts that made her 
 builders what they were. What was this fire ? 
 What was their secret ? What are the secrets of 
 the world ? What is it makes life worth the 
 living ?' 
 
 He raised his hat in reverence and in question. 
 Then he became aware of one that answered. 
 
 Beside the steps a woman stood, alone. He 
 could not see her face; the sunset made a glory 
 round her form. She might have been a spirit 
 from old Venice that was come in answer to his 
 question. For she raised her arms. Yes, she had
 
 6 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 raised her arms in answer, and so stood motionless, 
 looking across the water. 
 
 Then the ship turned away and passed behind 
 the Church of the Salute, and the sunset faded in 
 the sky.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Two men sat dining at a restaurant in Venice. 
 The place was gay with lights and people. There 
 was the constant hum of voices, the sense of the 
 presence of men and women gay, expansive, 
 free the odour of meat, of wine, of flowers, of 
 humanity. They dined for the most part in silence, 
 looking on the scene. Sometimes one made a short 
 remark, to which the other smiled or nodded. They 
 watched their neighbours with amusement. They 
 waited for the time to talk, when the more serious 
 business of dinner was over. They came at last to 
 figs and grapes, and one remarked, looking across 
 the table : 
 
 ' Have we not met before ? ' 
 
 The other shook his head. 'I, too, have been 
 thinking so. When you came into the cabin at 
 Trieste, and said you were my cabin companion, 
 I thought I recognised you. I was almost sure. 
 But I cannot remember where.' 
 
 'Nor I. And yet you seem familiar. You talk, 
 you laugh like some one I have known. I know 
 
 7
 
 8 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 not where nor when. I do not feel you are a 
 stranger.' 
 
 'No! And yet where was it?' 
 
 'I cannot think. It does not seem that we have 
 met. You have not travelled in any steamer I have 
 gone by, nor have we been in the same station.' 
 
 'No, it seems not. I thought your name might 
 be a help, but it is not. The name Captain Warden 
 awakes no memory/ 
 
 'Nor does Holt to me/ 
 
 ' Have we, then, doubles ? Maybe we met in 
 some existence before this/ 
 
 They laughed. The question seemed insoluble. 
 Why trouble, then, to find the answer ? 
 
 'We shall remember it sometime. Meanwhile,' 
 said Holt, 'let us suppose the answer given. We 
 have met, no matter where. We know each other; 
 even if not true of the past, it will be of the future. 
 We have a month in the same cabin/ 
 
 'If, then, there is no past,' said Warden, 'though 
 I am sure there is if, then, there is no past, let 
 us anticipate the future. We shall be friends, 
 therefore we are, and have been. Time can be read 
 from either end/ 
 
 They laughed again. Whatever the past had held 
 or the future might contain, the present made 
 them friends. They felt it. That which we feel 
 requires no proof.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 9 
 
 'Then you will come with me and see my friends,' 
 said Warden. 'They are at an hotel close by.' 
 
 For answer Holt rose up. They left the res- 
 taurant and walked along the Grand Canal. 
 
 The terrace where they sat at coffee gave on 
 the Grand Canal, and it was half in shadow. There 
 were no lamps upon it save at one end, beside the 
 stairs where the gondolas were rocking. But from 
 out the salon doors there came two floods of light 
 that made broad pools of brilliance on the marble 
 flags. Between these lakes of light and at the 
 farther end were shallows of half-dark, where 
 things and people were but indistinctly seen, and in 
 the shadow, close to the balustrade, were Warden's 
 friends. They were a Major and Mrs. Holman. 
 There was a girl who sat with them, but she was 
 half withdrawn, leaning upon the balustrade and 
 gazing at the water. She hardly moved when the 
 men were introduced, and when they had sat down, 
 Warden by Holman, Holt by Mrs. Holman, she 
 returned again to her watching of the Grand Canal. 
 
 'We saw you come,' said Mrs. Holman; 'we 
 were returning from the steamer office in the colon- 
 nade, and saw the ship come in.' 
 
 'You should have been with us,' he answered; 
 'we saw the city under the sunset, you saw but
 
 io ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 an ugly steamer. We had the best of it. That 
 is the way to come to Venice, not by the bridge 
 and station, her back door, but by the sea, her 
 ancient highway, to which she turns her face. Only 
 so can you understand what Venice was and is. 
 She is a city of a dream.' 
 
 'And you were a monster coming into that dream 
 - a nightmare with your straight black sides and 
 ugly bows that broke the waters. The gondolas and 
 fishing-boats fled from before you; and even when 
 you had gone you left your stain upon the sky, your 
 trouble in the water/ 
 
 'You were not glad to see us?' 
 
 'No. We have been here a whole enchanted 
 week, and now you come to break the spell, to 
 end our pleasure. The ship will carry us away 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, our dreams have all awaken- 
 ings. But the awakening is not yet. We have 
 still a night and day of Venice and of Europe. And 
 to-night there is a serenade.' 
 
 'Why is the serenade?' 
 
 'For us.' 
 
 'For us? But why for us? What have we 
 done that Venice should be glad to see us and sere- 
 nade us ?' 
 
 'She serenades the arrival of the ship, and as it
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 11 
 
 is the ship we shall go in, it is our ship, and there- 
 fore we may take ourselves some little of the honour/ 
 
 'And all the pleasure. But why should Venice 
 be glad to see this ship ? She is not great nor new, 
 nor even an Italian ship. Why does she give a 
 serenade ?' 
 
 'Let us recall/ he said, 'the history of Venice 
 and you will understand. She was a sea city, born 
 from out the foam like Aphrodite. The murmur 
 of its waters were her cradle-song. Its tides ran 
 in her streets, its salt was in her blood. She turned 
 her back towards the land and faced out seawards, 
 for from there came all her strength and glory. 
 Her Doges went each year to wed the ocean. They 
 placed a ring upon her finger, and made of the un- 
 stable wave a faithful mistress. Over the water- 
 roads the sons of Venice sailed to wealth and glory, 
 and they brought back to their city all they found. 
 They took her fame to every shore, they made the 
 East her own. She was the mistress of the sea. 
 
 'But that is long ago. Venice is grown old and 
 weak, her glory has departed. She sits beside the 
 sea, but no one comes out of the sunrise to her. 
 She has no lovers any more. She is forgotten, and 
 the sea knows other masters that have been born 
 in later days. No galleons come to anchor in her 
 harbour, and her water-streets are empty. She is
 
 12 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 old and poor, and men recall only the memory of 
 what she was.' 
 
 'Poor Venice,' said Mrs. Holman. 'Poor Venice, 
 to be old and poor and yet a woman.' 
 
 'Now suddenly she thinks she feels a new blood 
 stirring in her. She hopes once more to send her 
 name into the world, to say, "I only slept, and am 
 not dead." Her sons know not the sea. In these 
 later days she has wedded with the land, has made 
 an iron fetter to bind her to the earth, she a sea 
 city. So she must ask a stranger to come and help 
 her, a neighbour to do that which her merchant 
 princes once excelled the world in. This is the be- 
 ginning. The ships are not Venetian; they do not 
 sail from here, but only call in passing to and fro. 
 
 'Still it is a beginning, and it may grow to much 
 she hopes. She will be once more in touch with 
 the world, she will reawaken her memory in those 
 who had forgotten her. Is there a resurrection ? 
 She hopes there may be.' 
 
 'It is pathetic,' said Mrs. Holman, 'as if some 
 beauty of a former world were again to deck her- 
 self with jewels and come forth to dance and sing, 
 and hope that her lovers would return to her. But 
 her old lovers are themselves all dead, and the 
 newcomers know not Venice.' 
 
 'Except by name as a treasure-house of art, a
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 13 
 
 city on the sea, which once was great but whose 
 life is passed away.' 
 
 They were both silent, and from far away upon 
 the water there came the sound of music. The 
 stream of gondolas that passed was gay with coloured 
 lanterns hung about the prows, and there were 
 strings of light like jewels on the buildings. The 
 festival was beginning. 
 
 'In any case/ he said, 'we benefit. We have 
 the serenade. 5 
 
 'We have our benefit, too, in other ways,' she 
 answered. 'The steamer will never seem to me quite 
 the same. It gives her a romance that she is a 
 messenger from Venice.' 
 
 'A Cupid or a modern Ganymede asking for 
 loves renewed, or for new loves in place of those 
 grown old or dead ? No, nowadays no one asks 
 for love but only money, and that is all she goes 
 to seek. Venice to-day wants only money, not 
 heroism, glory, love, or immortality. We are a 
 worthy messenger.' 
 
 'Yet it gives a colour to our voyage.' 
 
 'In the days that were,' he said, 'the galleons 
 went to seek adventure. They cruised into new 
 seas, they found new lands and peoples. Who 
 knew what Fate might bring you to ? But now 
 everything is commonplace, we know the seas, the
 
 i 4 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 coasts, the lands, and we can count the days and 
 hours. There is nothing for us to find.' 
 
 'No Islands of Desire?' 
 
 'No Islands of Desire,' he said. 'They sank 
 beneath the waves a hundred years ago. We shall 
 never see them more.' 
 
 He thought that Mrs. Holman smiled. It may 
 have been a passing light that threw reflection on 
 her. 
 
 'Amide!' 
 
 The girl behind her moved and answered. 
 
 'Shall we go in gondolas and hear the serenade, 
 and see how Venice looks at night in all her jewels ?' 
 She waited for no answer, but called to Holman. 
 
 'Order us gondolas,' she said. 'Two gondolas. 
 One shall take you and me and Captain Warden, 
 one shall take Amitie and Mr. Holt. Tell her of 
 Venice,' she said to Holt. 'You know it well, I 
 think/ 
 
 He turned and tried to see across the dusk this 
 girl who was to be his companion, but she had 
 turned again to watch the scene. 
 
 'You shall tell her of Venice. She shall tell 
 you ' 
 
 'Of what?' he asked; 'of something I am sure 
 I shall be glad to know.' 
 
 The girl was looking at him with a slight sur-
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 15 
 
 prise. But Mrs. Holman did not answer. She 
 led the way down to the stairs, and a minute later 
 the girl and man were in a gondola. The gon- 
 dolier leant upon his oar, and the boat shot from 
 out the still eddy into the moving stream of boats. 
 Her bows were turned to the Rialto, and they were 
 alone.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE night was full of magic. Overhead the stars 
 were strewn like diamond dust upon a deep blue 
 robe, and Venice wore all her jewels. They were 
 hung in stars and crosses, ropes and festoons of 
 many-coloured light upon her palaces, the Lido 
 gleamed like some constellation of the sea, and on 
 the Grand Canal the ever-moving lights were like 
 a necklace laid upon her bosom. They moved 
 and trembled as if with her low breathing. 
 
 The air was full of music. There were bands 
 that played, and voices of men and women singing, 
 all unseen; their melody became one with the 
 night; its notes, low-toned and sweet, passed softly 
 on the water. The voices of the people in the 
 gondolas made a continuous murmur, and the sea- 
 wind sighed accompaniment. And underneath there 
 was a stillness yet more clearly heard because un- 
 bearable. In other cities there is always an under- 
 tone of sound, of horses beating on the stones, of 
 rattling carriages, the harsh tramp of feet that tread 
 and never rest. There is the murmur of the human 
 
 16
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 17 
 
 sea that never wholly sleeps, there is an echo of un- 
 rest that always fills their streets. 
 
 But here in Venice there is silence, only broken 
 by the straining of an oar upon a rowlock or the 
 splash of water on the piles. And rippling on that 
 silence, like a laugh on a still sea, there is an all- 
 pervading melody, so faint, so sweet it touches on 
 the heart. It draws it to be one with all the magic 
 of the city and the night. In Venice you can sit 
 and dream. 
 
 And so they sat and dreamt, forgetful for a while. 
 She must have made some sound or moved, for sud- 
 denly he came back from his dream and he remem- 
 bered. He turned and looked at her. 
 
 But in the gloom he could not see her. There 
 was against the dark the blur of a white dress be- 
 side him, and by the light of lamps that passed in 
 other boats he caught sometimes the gleam of 
 cheek or hair, a sudden outline and no more, so 
 quickly gone he scarce could seize it. She sat 
 quite silently, and looked out before her. She 
 might have been alone, so little did his presence 
 trouble her. Yet she was close to him, her dress 
 touched his, her shoulder was so near the least 
 movement would have placed it next to his, her 
 arms were crossed upon her lap. 
 
 He wished that he could see her, and the wish
 
 1 8 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 with wishing grew the stronger. He desired to 
 touch and break the charm that held her, but dared 
 not. And he felt from her an influence that stirred 
 his blood. 
 
 Most women are so self-contained, most women 
 are so cold that you can sit by them and hardly 
 realise a woman is beside you. They give nothing, 
 and they ask for nothing. But there are others 
 who send out some unseen influence that moves 
 into your blood and makes it quicker, hotter, redder, 
 and throws a mist into your brain. They give, 
 they ask, but what they give and take I know not 
 except trouble. They give you fear and make 
 you tremble. They draw from out you life and 
 strength. You would escape, but cannot. They 
 claim you, so that in answer and defence you wish 
 to claim them, to put your arms about them. 
 
 In the charmed night the magic grew. A per- 
 fume from her hair drifted across his face. Do 
 women ever realise the things they do to men, and 
 what men suffer ? You do not put a starving man 
 beside a ripening fruit. When men had blood 
 within their veins the world was wary. Now they 
 have water, and - 
 
 A jolt. A gondola that came from out a side 
 canal surged up against them. The gondoliers 
 cried one to the other. Then they moved on again.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 19 
 
 'Do you know Venice?' 
 
 The words came from him half-unconsciously, 
 almost a cry, so sharp they seemed across the silence. 
 
 'No, never.' 
 
 'I have been here before, but never long, only 
 enough to wish for more. It is a place that grows 
 into one's consciousness, that gives to life a mean- 
 ing it has not held before. I do not know which 
 is better, the first charm of strangeness and of beauty 
 or the love which grows with knowledge.' 
 
 ' Could you not tire of Venice ? ' 
 
 'Never, if once you loved her, for she is of infinite 
 variety. She lived a life that had a colour and a 
 meaning which is never-ending. The more you 
 understand, the more you find there is to under- 
 stand. You rise from height to height. And there 
 are always heights beyond, new summits that are 
 never summits, but only steps.' 
 
 'I think also I should not tire of it.' 
 
 'That is because you love it too, and so have 
 the key to knowledge. We can never know enough 
 of that which touches us. We only tire of things 
 we do not care for.' 
 
 'Do not you think we learn to know things first 
 and like them afterwards?' 
 
 He shook his head. 'I do not think so. No. 
 Knowledge is not the key to everything, certainly
 
 20 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 not to love. But love is the key to knowledge, the 
 only key. You feel, and then you understand. 
 You feel the charm of Venice, and you learn to 
 understand her, little by little. You can never 
 tire. We only tire of anything when we have 
 reached its end. A mystery solved, a flower plucked, 
 a reward won is worthless and forgotten. That 
 can never be with Venice. She never gives her- 
 self entirely, she hides always deeper things to learn. 
 She never shows her beauty wholly, but she keeps 
 behind her veil new beauties. Yet she is not strange 
 in that.' 
 
 'In what way do you mean ?' 
 
 'I mean that everything of beauty is the same. 
 Do you remember what Keats said ? 
 
 A thing of beauty is a joy for ever, 
 
 Its loveliness increases, it will never 
 
 Pass into nothingness, but still will keep 
 
 A bower quiet for us and a sleep, 
 
 Full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing. 
 
 No, it is true of everything whose beauty strikes us.' 
 The girl listened, and he saw by a light that 
 passed that she looked up a moment to him. He 
 would have caught that glance but for the dark 
 that came again and hid it. Then she turned her 
 eyes away again. 
 
 'Tell me some more/ she said, 'of Venice/
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 21 
 
 'There is so little I can tell you. I only admire; 
 I have not yet begun to know. If I were an artist 
 I could talk of her art, her pictures; if I were an 
 historian, of her past great deeds ; if I were a poet, 
 of her romance. But I am none of these. And 
 indeed to me Venice is more than all these things.' 
 
 ' How more ? ' 
 
 He might have answered that Venice is as a 
 woman is to him who loves her, more than her hair, 
 her eyes, her skin, her jewels, than her kisses even. 
 But he was silent. There are things to say, and 
 there are things to feel and never say. Never to 
 say ? There are times to speak, times to be silent. 
 There are temples where the tongue is tied and there 
 are groves and places sacred to Diana. We must all 
 pass through these. Then we may come to other 
 greater temples far beyond, where tongue and 
 thought is free. But they are hidden in labyrinths, 
 and no man reaches them alone. 
 
 They came to the Rialto and then turned. Before 
 them lay a river of bright lights that moved and 
 trembled. 
 
 'Tell me some more/ she said. 
 
 'She held a secret.' 
 
 'What secret ?' 
 
 'She knew how to be young and strong, to live 
 and love and die as no one lives or loves or dies
 
 22 
 
 to-day. She saw in life a something that it lacks 
 to-day, something that made it worth the living. 
 She saw things worth the dying for/ 
 
 'And to-day?' 
 
 'Consider. What are our lives to-day? We 
 are become, not living things, but parts of a great 
 world machine. We live no longer, but we turn 
 for ever on the wheels of law and rule. We neither 
 love, nor fear, nor hope, nor hate. We can count 
 our days and years and all the emptiness that fills 
 them. We think that we have conquered nature, 
 but nature has conquered us, made us machines and 
 attendants on machines. We have subdued chance 
 only to learn that chance makes all the value of our 
 lives. We banish fear and find that hope has gone 
 with her, for they are sisters who are never parted. 
 We live much longer, but within our years we have 
 much less of life. We put off death, and fear him 
 more for all his distance. We are much richer, yet 
 feel always poor. We strive for ever to gain - 
 nothing. The secret of life is to know how to live. 
 What is that secret ? ' 
 
 'They knew it ?' 
 
 'Surely they knew it. Look.* 
 
 On either side of them were palaces, upon their 
 right the Church of the Salute, and before them rose 
 the Ducal Palace.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 23 
 
 'Men who built like that felt differently from 
 what we do, they regarded life and nature from 
 another standpoint. They worked, not to make 
 money, but because they loved the work and put 
 their soul into it. They lived, not because it was 
 a habit and they were afraid to die, but because 
 life was good. They drank it like a wine that 
 made them strong. Life was a march, a triumph, 
 that moved to stirring music. It was a dance, 
 sometimes a danse macabre, always a dance. It 
 was so with all the world then. You see its tokens 
 everywhere. They call that time "the Renais- 
 sance." It was indeed a new birth. The world 
 grows old and dies and then is born again, over and 
 over again. That was its latest youth, its latest 
 love, and we now live in an old age.' 
 
 He wondered why he talked. It seemed she had 
 in her a charm that brought his thoughts to words. 
 He spoke not for her but for himself. She listened. 
 
 'And more,' he said, 'yet more.' 
 
 'What more could there be/ she asked, 'than life ?' 
 
 'Something beyond life. They saw or thought 
 they saw something we do not see to-day. They 
 lived not only for the day, but for the morrow, 
 for the great To-morrow.' 
 
 'You mean they were religious, and we have 
 irreligion now ? '
 
 24 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Yes, they were religious. They put into the 
 creeds and forms of which their faith was shaped 
 a reality of life. They felt and understood some- 
 thing we do not know, something that can never 
 be expressed, that is like life and makes the dead 
 to live. It comes not from the faith itself but from 
 the believers in that faith. If now to-day we have 
 no living faith, it is our fault. If we had spiritual 
 life within us we should soon make a form of faith 
 to manifest it in. The fault is ours. They had a 
 hope.' 
 
 'What was that hope ?' 
 
 ' I do not know. How can I tell ? I have it 
 not. No one has seen it nowadays.' 
 
 'Did they not attain it?' 
 
 'They could not have done so.' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Because anything once fully obtained is no 
 longer valuable. They never reached it, but they 
 saw if far off and ran towards it, confident that 
 sometime they would do so.' 
 
 'Yet they failed?' 
 
 'Perhaps they did not fail,' he said. 'It may 
 have been something far away. They may have 
 reached it, but we can never know.' 
 
 'How far?' 
 
 ' Beyond the river, on the other side.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 25 
 
 * Beyond death ? ' 
 
 'Yes, on the other side of death. They saw that 
 other side maybe. We do not/ 
 
 'You make me sad,' she answered, 'as music 
 does that tells of things we never understand/ 
 
 As if in answer to her words a music came from 
 some who sang on board a boat that passed. They 
 stopped to listen. The singers sang the songs of 
 Italy, those songs that come from beauty felt and 
 seen, which seeks expression to another sense. 
 These songs are gay, gay as the sunshine on the vines, 
 the ripple of the streams, the laugh of children going 
 home; these songs are sad, as passion that has burnt 
 and passed, as skies that are so hard they cannot 
 weep, as graves beneath the vines. They haunt 
 the memory with their echo, and their sweetness 
 lives embalmed in sadness. The waters lapped a 
 low accompaniment. The singers ceased, and they 
 passed on again. 
 
 They passed, but not the same. For in that 
 music there had come communion to them. The 
 veil the darkness hung dividing them had broken. 
 A sight that was not of the eyes showed each to 
 other, and they had touched in some strange sym- 
 pathy. He felt that he returned to her something 
 of the trouble she had given to him, that she held 
 something that was his, some of his thought had
 
 26 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 passed into her life as he felt in his veins a warmth 
 that came from her. 
 
 'Tell me,' he said, 'this afternoon why did you 
 answer ? ' 
 
 She made a little movement of surprise, her 
 hand touched his and was withdrawn. 
 
 'I do not know,' she answered vaguely. 'I saw 
 you, what you did. I answered. I did it without 
 thinking, by some impulse. How should I know 
 why I was made to answer?' 
 
 She turned from him and dropped her fingers 
 in the water. 'Can you not tell ?' she asked. 
 
 'How should I know ?' he answered. 
 
 'Because I answered you, because you made 
 me.' 
 
 Far away the singers sang again.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THEY landed at the steps before Saint Mark's, 
 where Warden and the Holmans waited for them, 
 and walked together to the square. 
 
 There were many people there. They passed 
 in a continuous stream across the front before the 
 Ducal Palace, they filed along beside the brilliant 
 shops, they stood in rings to hear the music. One 
 band was playing between the palace and the 
 colonnade; the other, the great orchestra of Venice, 
 was in the square. The campanile was between 
 them, and when one played the other rested. The 
 people passed from one to other, or sat at little tables 
 that the cafes placed in rows, reaching far into the 
 piazza. All the place was gay with light and colour, 
 all the people moved and laughed as if the beauty of 
 the night had touched them. The music passed into 
 their blood; they walked as if their spirits danced, 
 and their feet would fain keep measure. Their 
 footsteps on the marble flags made a continuous 
 murmur, slow and pleasant, quite unlike the pur- 
 ay
 
 28 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 posed tread of business cities. The rustle of the 
 dresses and the low voices blended with it into an 
 undertone on which the music rode triumphant. 
 The whole piazza was in flood with sound and light 
 that filled it to its rim. 
 
 They came to Florian's and sat down. Holt 
 looked to see what like were those with whom 
 already he had talked in darkness or half-dark. 
 
 There are some who say that soul and body 
 are two things, the soul a tenant in a house made 
 ready for it. Therefore they say you cannot tell 
 the one by knowing of the other. They are two 
 things distinct, bound in a strict partnership that 
 may be pleasant or may be sometimes an internecine 
 war. 
 
 And there are others who declare that soul and 
 body are one thing, you cannot have the one with- 
 out the other. There is, in fact, no soul; that 
 which we call such is but a function of the body, 
 and therefore, if you know one, you know the other 
 all in all, for they are one. 
 
 And there are other theories. None can be true, 
 and yet there may be truth in all. 
 
 There is a truth in this, that from some faces 
 and some forms experience teaches us to expect 
 certain ideas and thoughts, and so instinctively our 
 estimates of persons are first made by what we see.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 29 
 
 And though in time we modify that estimate, it 
 still remains a dominant factor in our minds. If 
 so, the converse must be true, that certain tones 
 of voice, of thought, lead us to look for their ex- 
 pression in the face and form. What like to Holt 
 were Holman, Mrs. Holman, and Miss Ormond ? 
 Though he had scarcely seen them, yet their words, 
 their thoughts, their unseen presence had built 
 within his brain unconsciously a form wherein to 
 occupy. All through the darkness it had grown, 
 now in the light he looked to see if it were true. 
 What was the vision of the Holmans ? What was 
 the truth ? 
 
 A woman of whom the first word and the last 
 would be, 'She is a woman.' She was not beautiful 
 nor plain; she was not tall nor short, nor thin nor 
 stout. Her hair was fair, her eyes were blue. 
 
 She was a woman, and you felt when you were 
 with her that she claimed no more, nor was there 
 more that any one could claim. She was a woman, 
 and was proud of it. She was a wife, and she was 
 happy in being so. She was a mother, and her 
 glory in her two little sons had no words to express 
 it. All these things were instinct in her. You 
 understood from the beginning, and you forgot 
 them never. She claimed from you all that a 
 woman claims from all men deference, kindness,
 
 3 o ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 tenderness, protection, if need be. And she would 
 give you in return all that she could. Her mind 
 perhaps contained little of the past, but she saw 
 and felt the present with instinctive truth. She 
 was so simple and she was so complete, that voice 
 or thought or sight said always the same thing. 
 
 And as she was amongst women, so was he 
 amongst men a man. 
 
 Of the two there was this, that once seen together 
 you never afterwards thought of one without the 
 other. They were complete together, and apart 
 each lacked a something that the other gave. They 
 were two sides of life the man and woman that 
 make up a whole. 
 
 They were a book to read, a play to watch, a 
 harmony to hear. Life was good to them, and as 
 they received so did they give again. 
 
 What of the girl ? 
 
 When in the darkness he had sat beside her 
 he had thought of her indistinctly. No one can 
 describe that which is as yet a possibility only. A 
 picture not yet painted, a poem not yet written, a 
 Galatea shut within her marble waiting for her 
 creator, a sleeping Beauty waiting for the Prince. 
 Such is every girl to every unmarried man. They 
 hold within them greater or lesser possibilities of 
 life and passion, but they are nothing. Innocence
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 31 
 
 and purity are negative ; beauty requires an awakened 
 soul to light it. 
 
 Fair hair with gleams of red and gold; still eyes 
 like pools those eyes that take and do not give ; 
 and for the rest a girl, that which some day will 
 be a woman. Such did he see, a girl such as Venice 
 might have known four centuries ago. 'Surely she 
 comes from the far past,' he thought. 
 
 The band was playing; it was a march they 
 played, and the strong music rang and echoed, 
 beating against the palaces and church in waves of 
 martial sound. It made the blood run faster and 
 the heart beat quicker, it brought into the mind 
 memories of many things, it woke desires and in- 
 stincts dormant. 
 
 'But it wants men,' said Warden; 'it wants 
 the beat of soldiers marching, that is what makes 
 its purpose. A march is music to which men 
 move.' 
 
 'And at the end a battle?' asked Mrs. Holman. 
 
 'Yes, at the end,' said Warden. 'In the old days 
 the music went into the fight, but not so now.' 
 
 'We have made war,' said Holman, 'a matter of 
 pure business. We have sacrificed everything to 
 what we call efficiency. That is our mistake.' 
 
 'Is it not business ?' asked Holt. 
 
 Holman shook his head. 'It is a passion, like
 
 32 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 all other forces that make or purify the world. In 
 the end the victory lies not in the coat, the gun, 
 the organism, but in the soldier's heart. The nation 
 that first learns how to bring back the music to the 
 battle-line will sweep the world. There is nothing 
 to beat a charge or stem a rout like music. We 
 knew, but have forgotten. We think men are 
 machines; they are not.' 
 
 Warden nodded. 'I have seen a bagpipe make 
 men go where no one would have thought that it 
 was possible. War is an art and not a business; 
 the greatest leaders are they who know this.' 
 
 The band was playing again, this time a waltz. 
 There was a sadness in its melody, the languor of 
 a dream. It drew the strength from out the heart. 
 The tendrils of the music bound the thoughts in 
 warmth and drowsiness. It had in it a hint of 
 death. 
 
 All music is a march, a dance, a requiem, or 
 between them. All life is love or war, and ends 
 in death. Love builds a world, but love grows 
 old and tired, and all it built grows grey. Then 
 war destroys it, and makes place for a new love to 
 build new worlds. And so the world goes on from 
 love to death, and so to a new life and higher. The 
 sweetest music is saddest; the least sad is that 
 which drives to war. That is a truth of life.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 33 
 
 They rose and walked down to the Grand Canal, 
 strolling along, crossing the bridge, and going north. 
 The people stood in ranks beside the water watch- 
 ing the fireworks on the Lido. When they ceased 
 the crowd moved on again. 
 
 'I wish,' said Mrs. Holman, 'that this night 
 would last for years. I love the stillness of the 
 water, the music that floats on it, the dark, the 
 stars, the crowd which is so happy. There are in 
 the world many places beautiful, yet there is but 
 one Venice. What is its charm ? Venice is dead. 
 Its life is no different now from that of any place.' 
 
 'Venice is dead,' he murmured, 'yet the per- 
 fume of the life that once was here hangs round 
 it. The jar that held the roses breaks and empties, 
 but their odour still remains for those who love it. 
 The sea-shell holds for ever in its heart the music 
 of the waves/ 
 
 'And perhaps,' she answered, 'Venice is less 
 changed than other cities, and preserves her beauty. 
 Neither is she so very old. Athens is dead and 
 turned to dust, and Rome is all in ruins. Other 
 places have assumed the garments of modernity, 
 which is the same for all. But Venice is not so 
 changed. Perhaps Othello, Portia, Desdemona 
 would know and recognise it could they see it 
 again.'
 
 34 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 They came back to the square. The crowd had 
 lessened. In turning past the campanile they met 
 an Indian girl, a fellow-passenger. She wore a 
 dress wherein the East and West were blended in 
 some subtle fashion. A gold-embroidered saree 
 made of Indian silk clung to her closely, as it clings 
 to the bare arms and shoulders of her Eastern 
 sisters. It hung in the same folds. Her hair was 
 done in Eastern fashion, that is near the classic. 
 She held herself with dignity and grace. She had 
 the ease and repose the West has quite forgotten. 
 Somehow she was in keeping with the city. Its 
 architecture has some of the Eastern colour. It 
 had a soul half-Oriental, and its dress, like hers, 
 was half of the East. She might have landed from 
 some galleon anchored now within the roads, or 
 been the harem slave of some great noble brought 
 from Morocco or Constantinople. 
 
 They watched her pass with pleasure, yet she 
 cast a silence over them. 
 
 For she brought to them remembrance of the 
 East from which she came, to which they must 
 return. The East, the East ! We love it when 
 we go there first, and hope to win affection in re- 
 turn. We never do. The East is afraid of us. 
 We capture her; but you may take by force a 
 body, not a soul that can be given only. She
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 35 
 
 holds her heart away from us, and gives us but 
 her passion. She is at most a mistress, not a wife. 
 Her suns beat on us cruelly, her hot winds burn 
 like barren kisses, her warm breath brings us lan- 
 guor, and unless we flee they bring us death. So, 
 gradually, our love becomes a fear that grows. We 
 dread her, and we hate the chain that draws us 
 back. Our hearts are ever in the West, whose 
 breath is cool, whose eyes and skies are grey and 
 sometimes dimmed with tears, her kisses fragrant 
 with the dew of dawn. 
 
 They stopped and watched the daughter of the 
 Orient till she disappeared among the people. 
 
 'She has her beauty,' Mrs. Holman said, 'and 
 yet I wish we had not seen her. She has broken 
 into our pleasure, and so ended it.' 
 
 Warden turned round. 'Let us forget again,' he 
 said. 
 
 'It is too late. The charm is broken. I remem- 
 ber that to-morrow we must sail,' said Mrs. Hol- 
 man. 'Our last evening in the West is ended. 
 Let us go now. Please tell my husband and Miss 
 Ormond.' 
 
 Holt and Mrs. Holman waited by the campanile, 
 while Warden followed the others to call them back. 
 Both were silent. It seemed the prose of life had 
 come into their pleasure.
 
 36 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'I have not asked you,' said Mrs. Holman sud- 
 denly, 'how did you like my cousin? Did you tell 
 her about Venice ?' 
 
 'Yes, what I could.' 
 
 'And she; what did she tell you?' 
 
 'Nothing.' 
 
 'Perhaps you did not ask. You know with us 
 women it is so; we must be questioned. You must 
 take, we do not give.' 
 
 'I asked a question, but she could not answer.' 
 
 'Some questions have no answers.' 
 
 'I think this had one; but she did not know it, 
 nor do I.' 
 
 Mrs. Holman looked at him and laughed. 
 
 'Time only has the answer to all questions.' 
 
 Venice was still and dark. Her jewels had gone 
 out. She remembered she was old. 
 
 A half-dead moon rose from the sea and looked 
 upon the sleeping city. Its faint far light silvered 
 her marbles and made mysteries in her streets. 
 Her quick fever over, Venice was herself again, her 
 still white shape stretched by the ebon water. 
 
 The present gone, the past awoke. 
 
 Within the shell the sounds of long ago were 
 born again. There echoed in her ways the passions 
 of dead centuries. The love, the hate, the lust of
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 37 
 
 life and death, the hot, strong tides that built her, 
 beat like a distant surge upon a phantom coast. 
 Her shadows moved. Lover, conspirator, assassin, 
 statesman, women with hair that shone like sun- 
 born halos, loitered and whispered. To the night 
 silences the lapping waters spoke, and the pale 
 moon climbed the skies.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 AT dawn a shower had passed, borne from the 
 mountains to the sea, and Venice sparkled fresh 
 from her morning bath. To the Rialto market 
 came the boats laden with fruit, with vegetables, 
 with birds on strings, with summer flowers that 
 lingered yet in secret places. Why did Horace tell 
 us to give up searching for late roses ? They and 
 the first spring blossoms are the best of all. 
 
 There must be little change now from the time 
 when Shylock came here to inquire the news of 
 Antonio's ships. The canals, the narrow ways, 
 the houses are not much altered. There was a 
 bridge, as there is now, across the Grand Canal. 
 True, it was wooden then, and now is marble; the 
 change is not so great. Had it been steel, there 
 were a change indeed. 
 
 And the marble is not new : it is old, and scratched 
 upon its stubborn hardness there are many names; 
 leaning upon its balustrade Holt read a number of 
 them. A few were names of men, but most were 
 women's names. 
 
 38
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 39 
 
 One was cut deep and made impression on the 
 hand that rested on it. 
 
 'Bianca,' and the date near fifty years ago. 
 Where is Bianca now, and where the man who left 
 her name here ? Probably both are dead. If they 
 are dead, what did they leave behind them ? Does 
 their love inherit still the world in children, or have 
 they passed into forgetfulness and left only what 
 the marble keeps here for a time ? 
 
 Men live and work and cut the names of women 
 upon the world. The greatest tomb the world 
 has known is not of emperor or of conqueror, of 
 philosopher or statesman. It is but of a woman. 
 It was not built to commemorate a victory, a glory, 
 to honour knowledge, wisdom, art, or thought of 
 men, but to a passion love. The greatest faiths 
 that built the greatest temples are the faiths of 
 women. Men build these temples, and preserve the 
 faiths for which they give their lives. 
 
 Men cut the names of women on the world and 
 on their hearts. What in return do women give 
 us ? 
 
 The waters down below the bridge were still 
 and dark. He could not see into them, they but 
 gave back reflection of the bridge, the sky, himself. 
 
 In the piazza the pigeons preened and strutted. 
 Hardly would they move to let the passers-by go
 
 40 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 on their way. They fluttered round a girl who fed 
 them, perching on her hands and shoulders, and 
 would not be shaken off. 
 
 Holt went into the Ducal Palace and crossed 
 the Bridge of Sighs. A tourist party were before 
 him, and he waited till they went on. And then 
 he went into the windowless stone cave that was 
 the room of torture and of death. It was quite 
 dark and still. The lamp of the guide had dis- 
 appeared, descending with his party; the voices 
 had died away. The silence of the thick stone 
 walls closed round him; he seemed alone in all the 
 world. 
 
 He lit a match and looked about him. He tried 
 to realise what it was that these stones had seen 
 and heard the blood that had poured upon this 
 floor, the cries that had beaten unavailingly and 
 found no exit. No one could see save those who 
 came to torture and to kill; no one but they could 
 hear. There was no help anywhere. 
 
 The red light of the match tinged the walls as 
 if with blood, and it went out. Darkness returned. 
 In the dead silence he could almost hear the walls 
 give forth again that which they had heard, which 
 had sunk into their hardness the sobs, the shrieks, 
 the blasphemies, the prayers, the moans, that died 
 away in silence.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 41 
 
 He felt his heart was beating faster. There was 
 a singing in his ears, a redness in his eyes. His 
 nostrils sniffed the acrid scent of blood. For a 
 moment he became terribly afraid. He had an 
 impulse to escape, to run to some place where the 
 sun was shining and the free wind blew. He 
 forced the impulse under. He wished to under- 
 stand. For this, too, was part of the life that 
 Venice had lived, a shadow in that abounding 
 light. How many hundred bodies had suffered in 
 agony where he stood ? How many hundred souls 
 had escaped at length through stone and door and 
 gone into the unknown ? They had suffered for 
 their own sins, for the sins of others; a suffering 
 given in punishment, in revenge, in lust of the pain 
 of others. 
 
 The lust of life is the lust of death, the lust of 
 pleasure needs its counterpart in the lust of pain, 
 of beauty in horror, of hope and gladness in de- 
 spair. Life is always balanced. If the pendulum 
 swings far one way, it will swing far the other. 
 
 He was sure that a key to understand all the 
 art and beauty of that great city and the life that 
 made it lay in this death-chamber, one key of the 
 many that opened the hundred locks of the gates 
 of understanding. Pleasure and pain are comple- 
 mentary one to the other. One could not have
 
 4 2 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 existed without the other. You must pay its price 
 for life in death, a great price. And presently 
 the horror and disgust somewhat passed away, and 
 he began to wonder whether the price was in fact 
 so great. The fear of death is greatly fictitious 
 and greatly modern. It exists for the most part 
 in the imagination. Acquaintance with death does 
 not increase the fear, but decreases it. When men 
 are first in battle, and see wounds and death, they 
 are horrified and sickened; but by degrees, by 
 quick degrees, the feeling wears away. It is not 
 that men become callous or hardened, but that 
 they learn to estimate these things at their proper 
 worth. The more men see of wounds and death, 
 the less they think them to be feared. After all, 
 the capability of the body to suffer is limited, far 
 more limited than those who have not suffered it 
 think. Most men have passed it some time or an- 
 other, and become insensible from pain. No one 
 tortured in that cell could have felt more, because 
 there was no more to feel. Nature is very merci- 
 ful, and we never know her mercy till we need it. 
 And death itself; the horror of death lies in the 
 fear of it; the more you know of it, the less you 
 fear it. 
 
 In old Venice death and suffering were always 
 near; there was the sword of the public and the
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 43 
 
 private enemy, the dagger of the secret assassin, 
 the poisoned cup, the torture chamber; there was 
 disease against which science had no help. From 
 youth up they looked on pain and death and feared 
 them not, but found in them a relish to life, a spur, 
 an incentive to take all that life could give you, to 
 drink the cup to the lees and laugh. 
 
 Life was hot and strong and passionate. Those 
 who could not face its swirling tides became priests 
 or monks, and went into the eddies of life. They 
 lived their lives of quietness apart. They did not 
 try to persuade all the world to peace because they 
 were afraid of war; they did not seek to stagnate 
 all a nation's blood to keep time with their own. 
 Life was then of extremes, of hill and valley, of hate 
 and love, of fear and hope, and not an uniformity 
 of nothing, a dead plain whereon continuous shallow 
 pools of sentiment make the ways sloppy. 
 
 Therefore was such a prison, such a torture 
 chamber, possible in the great city. It did not 
 strike imagination then as it did now. It was the 
 inevitable shadow of a strong life that burned with 
 brilliance. 
 
 And now we remember Venice for her loves, 
 and not her hates; for her virtues, not her sins. 
 They are forgotten. Much is forgiven her because 
 she loved much.
 
 44 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 But nowadays our life burns dimly. We are old 
 men who fear death more than young men. We 
 are so afraid that we go about and pray for uni- 
 versal peace; we say that in the whole existence 
 there is nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth 
 suffering for. Put up with everything and still live 
 on; we call it by high names, humanity, morality, 
 altruism, so to excuse our slowness of the blood. 
 We try to reduce everything to commonplace, and 
 life to universal formulae. In vain, in vain. The 
 only Absolute we know is nothing. Death and life 
 are one. 
 
 Yet he was glad to leave it, glad to cross the bridge 
 again and come before the art that glows from wall 
 and ceiling in the palace. Its form and colour 
 came from life at its highest. The painters mixed 
 their paints with blood. Without it no great thing 
 in the world has been achieved. Great nations, 
 cities, families, great laws, great arts, great science 
 have risen from seas of blood, like souls above it. 
 We write our names upon the world in blood and 
 not in ink or water. It is fire that lights the world, 
 fire struck from the hearts of men. 
 
 What strikes this fire ? 
 
 He stepped out of the Council chamber to the 
 balcony that gives upon the harbour. Standing 
 there he found Miss Ormond.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 'You have come,' he said, 'to say good-bye to 
 Venice? You are alone?' She turned round sud- 
 denly, surprised that he should be there. 
 
 'They are looking at pictures, Mrs. Holman and 
 Captain Warden.' 
 
 'And you? You do not care for pictures?' 
 
 'My eyes get tired,' she answered; 'all pictures 
 have the same distance.' 
 
 'And so the eye gets tired ?' 
 
 ' I want a change to look at things far off, to 
 look at nothing. That is a rest.' 
 
 'The sea and sky,' he answered, 'where our 
 sight can travel on and on; to see nothing, and 
 therefore to see more; just as our arms get tired 
 with holding, so we stretch them forth to nothing. 
 And hold the more. A thing or many things 
 are finite; there are but two infinities everything 
 and nothing; they are the same.' 
 
 She looked at him in doubt. 'But there must 
 be a foreground to the sea and sky. There are 
 the boats, the waves, the tide.' 
 
 'So there must be a foreground to eternity, the 
 
 45
 
 46 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 present. Everything that we see and know is but 
 a foreground, and the distance gives it scale. I 
 have heard it said a picture should have in it always 
 somewhere a hint of distance. In an interior a 
 window should be open or a door, or there should 
 be a beam of light, so that the eye and thought will 
 not forget all that there is beyond.' 
 
 She did not answer. They went inside to the 
 great Council chamber, but it was empty, so they 
 set to walk through the other rooms looking for 
 Mrs. Holman, but they did not find her. The 
 great bare figures of the frescoes seemed almost 
 living. They stared, they moved. 
 
 'You do not care for art?' he asked. 
 
 She stopped and looked him in the face, and 
 dropped her eyes. Then she moved on again. 
 
 'I ask you questions, but you do not answer/ 
 
 'You ask me questions and I do not answer, 
 because your questions are not questions.* 
 
 'What are they?' 
 
 'They are assertions. You do not ask because 
 you want to know, but because you want me to 
 know something.' 
 
 ' How do you mean ? If I do so it is not con- 
 sciously.' 
 
 'You asked me why I answered you when you 
 sailed in; you knew I did not know, you knew I
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 47 
 
 could not tell you. You only asked because you 
 wished me to remember I had done so and to won- 
 der why, to keep on thinking of it. You ask me 
 if I care for art. You mean that you are sure I do 
 not, and want me to understand that you have 
 seen it.' 
 
 'I did not mean it so/ 
 
 'No; but like me, like all of us, you also say 
 and do things you do not know the reason of/ 
 
 'Of course; I live, for instance, but I have no 
 idea why, nor for what end, nor whether life has 
 any meaning.' 
 
 'I have been asked,' she said impatiently, 'a 
 hundred times if I cared for art, and I have an- 
 swered Yes. I have believed yes. I like light and 
 colour, form and line.' 
 
 'Are they not art?' 
 
 'Until yesterday, until to-day, I should have said 
 Yes. Now I begin to think art is far more than that.' 
 
 'What more?' 
 
 She stopped again and looked at him angrily 
 and yet with a hidden supplication in her eyes. 
 
 'If you are clever why should you wish to make 
 me feel a fool and ignorant ? Does it give you 
 pleasure ?' 
 
 It was his turn to be silent. What had he said 
 or done, to make her turn on him like this ? How
 
 48 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 had he vexed her ? and as for ignorance, it was he 
 who felt the ignorance. 
 
 'I am very sorry,' he replied; 'I did not mean 
 it. You think I am a prig; it is not true. I do not 
 think I know things. It is the other way. I know 
 my ignorance too well. I look and try to learn. 
 I asked because I wished to know/ 
 
 'And I am sorry,' she said, 'for I know that what 
 you say is true. You have not wished to humble 
 me, yet you have done it.' 
 
 'And you have me,' he answered. 'Yesterday 
 perhaps I should have said I knew a little; now 
 I am sure it is not so. That is your doing; you 
 have done to me as I to you.' 
 
 She looked at him as if she thought he was de- 
 fending himself by echoing her accusation. 
 
 And yet he knew that it was true. He had been 
 content before with what he knew of life and art 
 little enough, picked up from books and people. 
 He had not troubled himself about either. Art 
 was but an addition to the pleasures and the orna- 
 ments of life, and life itself was simple enough to 
 be taken as it came. Yet now it seemed to him 
 that both had meanings, and that they should be 
 known ; that art and life were not two things but one, 
 or, rather, art was part of life, a facet of it. There- 
 fore he tried to know more of the one and other.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 49 
 
 Life had so many sides; men were part of life 
 and women. To understand art or life completely 
 one must see it from both their standpoints. What 
 was a woman's standpoint ? What did this girl 
 think of these pictures ? He asked her because 
 he wished to know. 
 
 Yet how could she answer ? 
 
 It must all look so very different from their side. 
 To take one thing alone. She did not look at the 
 nude pictures, but passed them by; and yet to 
 men they are, perhaps, the most beautiful side of 
 art. Because man loves woman all in all; he 
 glorifies her; there is in her for him nothing common 
 or unclean. She thrills his pulses with a romance 
 born of the earth that rises towards heaven. 
 
 The artist draws her, with a passion that is like 
 sunshine, which makes beautiful everything it touches. 
 His passion gives her form meaning and poetry. 
 He feels the spirit of immortality it holds for him. 
 What he feels he puts into his picture, and all men 
 see and feel it. 
 
 With woman it is different. How can she un- 
 derstand ? When women paint women the passion 
 is not there, and the picture does not live. When 
 women see women painted they can only feel what 
 they have within them. Therefore they do not care 
 for such art, they are afraid of it. They wonder
 
 5 o ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 at men liking it, because they do not understand. 
 They condemn us, perhaps, whereas it is their own 
 deficiency. Man sees in every woman something 
 of the goddess, and in return what do they give us ? 
 
 Always the same question and no answer. 
 
 Is there ever an answer to the questions that we 
 ask of life, of fate, of art, of women ? 
 
 Where are the Sibylline books ? Are they all 
 burnt ? 
 
 They suddenly came on Mrs. Holman and on 
 Warden. 
 
 'Where have you come from ?' they demanded. 
 
 Holt told them he had been down in the prison. 
 
 'You look/ said Warden, 'as if you had seen 
 a ghost.' 
 
 'I tried to see some ghosts there,' he answered; 
 'I called to them.' 
 
 'So did Glendower. "I can call spirits from 
 the vasty deep," he said, to which Percy answered, 
 "And so can I, and so can every man. But will 
 they come when you do call ?" 
 
 'They did not come.' 
 
 'Why did you wish to see them ?' asked Mrs. 
 Holman. 
 
 'To ask them questions/ 
 
 'Questions of the past ?' 
 
 'No! of the present/
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 51 
 
 'The answer to the present is in the future, not 
 in the past,' she said. 
 
 'We should all have done better,' said Warden, 
 'had we gone out to the Lido, or made a trip to 
 Murano, instead of spending all our morning in a 
 picture gallery and palace. You have been ghost- 
 seeking and failed; Miss Ormond has tired her 
 eyes/ 
 
 'I have enjoyed myself/ said Mrs. Holman. 
 
 'You would enjoy anything, I believe,' said Warden. 
 
 'I care for art, or, rather, for some art, and you 
 do not,' she answered. 
 
 'I don't,' said Warden. 'Frankly I don't. I, 
 like Miss Ormond, prefer the sea and sky and the 
 fresh air.' 
 
 'One may like them too,' said Mrs. Holman, 
 'and still like art.' 
 
 'Perhaps. And any art that was as true as they 
 are would please me too, I think. But Madonnas 
 who look sad or simper, saints full of arrows, trees 
 that bear dead men as fruit, imaginary resurrections, 
 and the like, do not appeal to me.' 
 
 'What would?' asked Mrs. Holman. 'What 
 would you have had these Venetians paint if not 
 what they did ?' 
 
 Warden reflected. 'I would have had them 
 paint not holy Virgins, but the Venetian women,
 
 52 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 the gorgeous ladies of their day, the market women, 
 the village maidens as they lived and loved. I 
 would have had them paint not stupid legends like 
 that of the fisherman's ring, but pictures of the 
 galleons going out to sea to fight, or sailing far away 
 to unknown lands. I would have had them paint 
 not tortured saints, but if they wanted blood and 
 bones, then battlefields where men died worthily. 
 Of all the glory of Venice how little is there in its 
 art?' 
 
 Mrs. Holman and the girl looked sympathy. 
 
 'I think,' said Holt, 'that you are wrong.' 
 
 ' How wrong ? Do you mean to tell me you 
 would not sooner have such pictures painted as 
 these painters alone could paint, than all these 
 acres of saints and other trumpery that they spent 
 their genius on ? Don't you prefer a laughing 
 girl to a Madonna, a man doing something and 
 not merely suffering?' 
 
 'Perhaps I would, even most people would to- 
 day. But you forget that they painted not for us 
 but for themselves, their times, their world.' 
 
 'Why did they want to paint such things ?' asked 
 Mrs. Holman. 'What did their world see in them ?' 
 
 'Because,' he said, 'art is a complement to life. 
 It makes it clearer, sounder; it tells us truths that 
 the present hides. Why should they wish to paint
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 53 
 
 all that they did and not the scenes of ordinary life ? 
 Because they were the common things of life. And 
 art can never compete with reality. It cannot, 
 and it should not.' 
 
 ' Why not?' 
 
 * It cannot, because no pictured thing, no written 
 thing, can ever equal life. It should not, for why 
 attempt the impossible and the unnecessary ? Art 
 has its message different from ordinary life.' 
 
 'What is that message ? To give us the unreal ?' 
 asked Warden. 
 
 'No, but to give us other meanings and other 
 values of life besides those that are before us daily. 
 The views of life are infinite. Art teaches us what 
 we do not see daily and what we forget. None of 
 us care to see paintings and read books of our own 
 everyday life. Instinct tells us that is not what we 
 want. The servant girl reads of duchesses, the 
 duchess reads about the slums.' 
 
 'Yes, that is true,' said Mrs. Holman. 'I live 
 in India, and I do not care to read the tales of Anglo- 
 Indian life. I wish to read of what I do not know.' 
 
 And Warden, too, agreed. 'Stories of soldiers' 
 life and pictures of it I do not care for, being myself 
 a soldier. I did not think of that.' 
 
 'And you do not care for pictures of life to-day, 
 however good they be. I wonder if many of the
 
 54 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 great works of ancient art we so admire to-day 
 appeared so great to those who saw them new. 
 They may have gained by strangeness. Yes, the 
 message of true art is to the day not to the morrow.' 
 
 'Is it not of both?' asked Mrs. Holman. 'Is 
 not the highest art for ever?' 
 
 He wondered if it were so, and if there were any 
 'for ever.' They walked down the great staircase 
 to the square. Warden and Miss Ormond went 
 on in front. Mrs. Holman asked 
 
 'Are you an artist ?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'A poet?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'But you would like to be?' 
 
 'I do not think so. Yet I would like to see as 
 they do. It is not that they see more than other men, 
 for they see less. But they see what others do not. 
 It is the hidden things of life that come to them and 
 the ordinary life that is hidden. They turn life's gar- 
 ment inside out. I would like to see all sides - 
 their side, the world's side, religion's side, man's 
 side and woman's to have a glimpse of all of them.' 
 
 Mrs. Holman looked at him curiously. 
 
 'Do you think that any one can see all this at 
 once ? and if he could, would he not be in danger 
 
 o 
 
 of developing something of a mental squint?'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 55 
 
 He laughed. 'Perhaps.' 
 
 The sunlight in the square lay like aerial gold 
 that flowed and ebbed against it; the life that passed 
 was dull and commonplace. It wanted the figures 
 from the frescoes to come and live in it. Or is it 
 that life requires interpretation ? We see the paint- 
 ings through the minds of those who painted them, 
 we see life through our own. The dulness is in the 
 seer. 
 
 Before them Warden and Miss Ormond walked 
 and chatted. They were disputing merrily about a 
 matter. At last they heard Warden say decisively 
 
 'All men are poets naturally, no women are; 
 and the proof is that we see a poem in things that 
 you deem commonplace.' 
 
 'What things, for instance?' 
 
 'A salmon mayonnaise, a good beef-steak, a 
 tankard of cool beer.' 
 
 Miss Ormond laughed. 'So that is your poetry; 
 material, all of the earth and earthy.' 
 
 'So are all real things,' he answered. 'You 
 can grasp them and they do not fade.'
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 AT noon the ship had come round from the docks 
 and anchored in the Grand Canal, and when they 
 went on board late in the afternoon they met the 
 Syndic and a party returning from her. There 
 had been a lunch on board and speeches to wish 
 well to the adventure. But in these days when 
 everything has become a matter of machine-like 
 regularity good wishes seem superfluous. There is 
 so little one can wish for with any likelihood of 
 realisation. For one wishes for the unusual and 
 not the commonplace. 
 
 They watched their fellow-passengers come on 
 board. A voyage is a strange thing. It is a space 
 between two worlds of East and West, between two 
 lives, that which we live at home, and that out 
 there. It belongs to neither. It is a neutral time 
 that does not link, but rather divides them, making 
 the transition possible. And those we meet on 
 board, for the most part have no place before or 
 after. They come into our lives when first they 
 mount the gangway. For a month they may mean 
 
 56
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 57 
 
 much or little to us. Some of them must mean much 
 in that brief time, for in their power is much. The 
 voyage may be pleasant or the reverse; they have 
 it in their power to make it either. You get to know 
 them well in some ways, and in others not at all. 
 There are many sides of character that a voyage 
 never calls forth. Then when the ship arrives at 
 its journey's end they go again into the unknown 
 from which they sprang, they disappear. Yet 
 perhaps not all of them. There may be one some- 
 times whose thread will get so firmly twisted into 
 yours upon that voyage that it can never afterwards 
 be separated quite. 
 
 They were a strange mixture that came up. Their 
 appearance was dramatic. They rose as from the 
 sea, their faces showing above the rail without a 
 warning; they stepped upon the deck; and then 
 they went below and others followed them. 
 
 They were not like the passengers of other ships 
 on which Holt had travelled, going to and from the 
 East. For these are usually all the same. Soldiers, 
 civilians, merchants; it is strange to see how Indian 
 life levels all differences that occupation impresses 
 on the appearance, and has a clear stamp of its own. 
 It overrides all differences. 
 
 But in this ship there was no sameness. There 
 was no dominating nationality; English and Ger-
 
 58 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 man, Italian, Austrian, all were fairly numerous, 
 and there were two Greeks, a Russian Jew, a Dane, 
 Egyptians, and the Indian girl. The ship was a 
 kaleidoscope of nationalities. Their occupations 
 could not so easily be guessed. They were for 
 time to show. Noticeable amongst them all were 
 a company of nuns. Their ugly dresses and white 
 coifs showed up beside the other women. They 
 gave distinctness and decision. 
 
 He watched the stream that came on board and 
 wondered. Amongst these numerous faces was 
 there one he should remember ? He thought there 
 was not. How should he know ? 
 
 They sailed at sunset as they had come in. They 
 watched the city sink into the waves from which 
 she rose. Her glory disappeared. 
 
 But up above her all along the west the sunset 
 lingered. The sky glowed like an emerald sea, and 
 little clouds, all crimson flushed, made islets on it. 
 It seemed a last good-bye, a flush of sorrow, and it 
 said: 'Return, for in the West is home; the East 
 to which you go holds nothing for you. Lo, the 
 seas are dark before you, and your light is left 
 behind.' 
 
 They sat and watched in silence for their hearts 
 were sore. 
 
 In the old days when men sailed forth their gal-
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 59 
 
 Icons from young Venice they went gladly. They 
 went because the wander-thirst was on them and 
 their souls were in Cathay. The world was wide, 
 and held within its hands innumerable unknown 
 places and peoples. It was full yet of romance, 
 none who sailed could tell whither they would arrive 
 nor what would befall them. There were dangers 
 by sea and land, storms and hidden rocks, land 
 thieves and water thieves. There were inhospi- 
 table shores, where no people lived, or only savages. 
 Enemies lurked for them, and Death awaited them 
 on every hand. 
 
 But were there not rewards for those who dared ? 
 Were there not foreign kings who lived in palaces 
 of gold who gave of it to those who came, orchards 
 of golden apples, vineyards with jewelled grapes ? 
 There were princesses fairer than mortal women 
 to be wooed and won. They pined in fairy grottoes, 
 hidden in deep trees, for their deliverer. And far 
 beyond the sunrise were the magic seas where no 
 one yet had sailed; they lay in endless summer 
 and they held the Islands of Desire. 
 
 Can you wonder that men sailed forth with shouts 
 of gladness in those old days ? These were rewards 
 well worth the winning. Hope went before them and 
 the world was wide. 
 
 But now how different is it. More and more
 
 60 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 reluctantly we go forth to the East. Adventure 
 and romance are dead. We know where we shall 
 be each day, and when we shall arrive. There 
 are no dangers nor are there great rewards. There 
 are no unknown lands. Upon the chart are marked 
 each land, each sea. The machine rules everything, 
 ourselves, our days, our years. There is not any- 
 thing unknown we may discover; there are no palaces 
 of gold ; there are no princes nor princesses. Every 
 place is ruled, is levelled, flattened by a machine 
 called Law; men and their hopes and passions, 
 women in their beauty and their tears, are but the 
 flies upon its wheels. We used to travel on the wheels 
 of Chance, but Chance is dead long, long ago; now 
 we go only round and round on the machine. 
 
 The Islands of Desire are sunk beneath the waves. 
 They lived in phantasy alone, or like the clouds 
 upon the sunset sky. No man shall find them ever 
 more, shall feel their summer or be lulled beneath 
 their trees. 
 
 So thought they as they watched the sunset fade 
 behind them. For in front the seas were dark, and 
 in the sky there was no flush, no light. There were 
 only stars that hung far up; like eyes that watched 
 but gave no light, no help. Romance is dead for 
 ever. She with Chance and Fortune have been 
 crushed beneath the wheels of Fate.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 61 
 
 And yet, are all the ways mapped out, and do 
 we know our destinations ? Our hearts, our souls, 
 are they turned too upon a wheel, and do we know 
 where they will go ? Or are there charts that tell us ? 
 Can we say with certainty, *I go to this land or to 
 that ? ' Are there no magic seas where no man yet 
 has sailed, no island we may find and make our own 
 and reign the only king for ever ? Are there no 
 fairy princes left to take a maiden by the hand, 
 awaken her and lead her to his palace all of gold ? 
 Is all the world grown old and grey ? 
 
 There is a country yet where all is young; where 
 all is strange and new. Of that country nothing 
 ever will be known. Though many men have 
 travelled there, they make no maps; though women 
 have arrived they have never told the road to follow. 
 There is no road, no path, no track, for no one ever 
 yet has gone the same path as his predecessor. Each 
 must make his way alone, his way anew, a way that 
 will close after him and leave no trace. In that heart 
 country there are seas that no ship has ever sailed. 
 There are new lands no foot has ever trod. There 
 are islands girt with the inviolate sea, an island for 
 each man who dares. The winds blow there and 
 waft the ship in their own way. There is no com- 
 pass, and the stars wheel round and round and laugh. 
 
 Only the winds that blow from heaven are true.
 
 62 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 They know the way and only they. The mariner 
 who is wise quits then the helm and spreads his sails 
 and sits upon the prow. He sits and watches while 
 the gales take him across the uncharted sea. 
 
 He watches, and at last the golden mist dissolves 
 and shows him he has reached these Islands of 
 Desire. 
 
 They sat on deck until the light had faded and 
 the darkness was all round them; till the night 
 was late. There was a silence all along the decks. 
 They sat and looked across the night, as if against 
 its blackness to picture what had been.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A SAPPHIRE sea that stretched to the horizon, a 
 plate of bluest water bounded by a rim, and above 
 the inverted bowl of clearest heaven. It seemed 
 always the same sea, tossing its waves into little 
 crests of foam, running, rising, falling; it seemed 
 always the same sky set above it, cloudless and full 
 of light. And in the middle, to all appearance 
 fixed immovably though moving always, was the 
 ship. The waves were cleft before her bows, they 
 hurried along her sides, they closed in foam behind 
 her; she bowed in long and stately measure like a 
 great sea-creature in a long-timed canter of rhythmic 
 rise and fall. Yet there seemed no result : the blue 
 horizon rim came never nearer, the heavens never 
 changed. Only the sun climbed up the great blue 
 bowl, hung in the zenith, and then fell again. 
 
 'It seems to me a new world,' the girl said. 'I 
 have never before been out of sight of land with 
 nothing but the sea and sky. I have never before 
 been with such strange people; I mean so near them, 
 able to make friends with them if I want.' 
 
 ' Are they strange ? '
 
 64 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Yes, they are strange. They are of so many 
 different nations. These Germans, Austrians, Ital- 
 ians; I think that man over there is Greek; there 
 is the Indian girl, and then there are ourselves/ 
 
 'True,' answered Holt, 'we are a mixed company/ 
 
 'And not in nationalities alone, but in other 
 things. Look, there are nuns. Their dress is 
 ugly, but it gives to them a dignity and personality. 
 They have their way of life and their belief, and 
 are not ashamed of either. Nowadays in England 
 we all try to be the same and have no individuality.' 
 
 'Yes, we are ashamed to be ourselves. But 
 perhaps we have no selves to be. We are but coins 
 struck from out a mint in the image and super- 
 scription of our country, and that is all. We are of 
 it, not of ourselves. Some day, perhaps, we shall 
 have a reaction, and localities and individuals again 
 have life.' 
 
 'There are these German women. Mrs. Hoi- 
 man told me that they are missionaries. They 
 are girls going to the East to marry men they have 
 never seen.' 
 
 'Yes, it is true. These broad wedding rings 
 they wear are their betrothal rings. They bind 
 them to a man they have not seen, to be half of 
 him, to share their lives with him.' 
 
 'How can they do it ?' asked the girl.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 65 
 
 'How can the nuns abjure all that seems to make 
 life worth the living and still be happy ? I do not 
 know. Women are strange creatures/ 
 
 'Not stranger than you men,' she answered. 
 'You are a mystery to us as we to you/ 
 
 Holt nodded. 'I suppose/ he said, 'we seem 
 so, but to ourselves we are quite simple/ 
 
 The girl laughed. 'As to ourselves we women 
 are quite simple. We wonder when you talk of 
 our mystery. Wherein lies that mystery?' 
 
 He looked at her and shook his head. 'If I 
 could tell you where the mystery lay I should have 
 solved it. I can no more tell where it lies than 
 why I should like talking to you/ He saw her 
 face was beautiful, her colour like the texture of a 
 flower, her smile like sunshine on the sea, yet he 
 knew that the charm was not in them. They gave it 
 strength and meaning, but the magic lay much 
 deeper. 
 
 She looked up with a sudden deepening of her 
 colour which quickly passed. 'Tell me/ she said, 
 'something about the men. Who is the happy old 
 man with thick white hair ?' 
 
 'He is a German, a Professor. I don't know 
 yet what it is exactly he professes, but I have been 
 told that it is insects and plants. He is going to 
 German East Africa for some Society/
 
 66 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'He looks too old to travel to such places. He 
 should be at home. Why does he travel?' 
 
 Holt shook his head. 'Why do some work more 
 than for daily bread ? Why do they travel to the 
 waste places of the earth, run into danger and face 
 death ? Why do they not take the rest they want ? 
 A woman or a child or children; that is the answer.' 
 
 She looked at him in silence, drawing her brows 
 together. 'Is that so always?' 
 
 'I think so, nearly always.' 
 
 'It is not for money, not for fame?' 
 
 He shook his head. 'It is women who care 
 for these, not men. Men care for work some- 
 times, but never for the reward of work beyond a 
 simple measure, except ' 
 
 'Except ?' 
 
 'To give away/ 
 
 'To whom ?' 
 
 'To women.' 
 
 'You know that it is so with the Professor?' 
 
 'I know nothing. I only guess. Yet I think 
 I am not wrong.' 
 
 For a time they sat in silence, then he continued : 
 
 'I had a talk with him this morning. We were 
 on deck together long before breakfast. It is the 
 glory of the day, the sunrising hour. He came and 
 sat by me, and he reproached me.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 67 
 
 'Why did he do that?' 
 
 'He said we English were so insular, that every 
 one made friends except us; we live upon an island 
 and we make islands of ourselves. We make a cold 
 and misty sea about our personalities. Yes, it is 
 true.' 
 
 'Why should it be true ?' 
 
 ' Partly, perhaps, the force of habit. In England, 
 now, all society is organized in strata. All our 
 acquaintance lies on our own level. We never 
 know those who are above us or beneath. We 
 know that they exist, and that is all. Therefore 
 we become extraordinarily narrow. We are in 
 touch only with one form of life and thought, so 
 that we come to think that is the absolute. What- 
 ever differs from that is wrong.' 
 
 'Yet,' said the girl slowly, 'it is the people that 
 differ from us who make the colour of our lives/ 
 
 'Nothing could be more true than that,' he an- 
 swered; 'and more, they make our lives the wider, 
 they make us realise ourselves the more.' 
 
 'Ourselves?' she asked. 'How does it make us 
 realise ourselves ?' 
 
 'Because,' he answered, 'they are part of us, 
 part of ourselves.' 
 
 She looked at him. 'How can that be? I do 
 not understand.'
 
 68 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'You know,' he said, 'the Eastern way of looking 
 at the world. They see it whole. We all belong 
 to one great life, as all water-drops are of the sea. 
 Therefore every one and all life is part of our wider 
 self/ 
 
 'It is hard to understand,' she answered. 
 
 'It is not so hard,' he answered, 'if you realise 
 that every one has within him a little of every one 
 else. We have all our speciality, but we have also 
 a little of every one else's. A man may be, say, a 
 soldier. That is his outstanding quality; but he 
 has a little of the priest, the merchant, the artisan, 
 the statesman, the thief, the labourer, the convict. 
 He may be brave, he has within him something of 
 the coward; he may be upright, he has a touch of 
 dishonesty.' 
 
 'And so with women ?' 
 
 'So with women. Nay, more, man may be 
 man, he has a touch of woman, and she of man. 
 All nature is akin to us because we have in us some- 
 thing of all nature. She cannot strike a note but 
 what we have the echo.' 
 
 'If that were so,' she said, 'that all the world 
 is part of us, we should love all the world. Yet 
 we have hates.' 
 
 He shook his head. 'Do not we hate ourselves 
 sometimes ? Is there in all the world anything
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 69 
 
 that we hate so much as sometimes we hate a thing 
 within ourselves ?' 
 
 She looked across the sea and did not answer. 
 
 'Therefore,' he said, 'in trying to understand other 
 people we are really trying to understand something 
 that is also in ourselves. We all contain all pos- 
 sibilities.' 
 
 'Would it not,' she answered, 'be easier to under- 
 stand these in ourselves ?' 
 
 'No one,' he answered, 'ever understood himself. 
 That is the last thing possible. You might as well 
 pull yourself from a river by catching your own 
 hair.' 
 
 She laughed. 'I think some one did that once, 
 did he not?' 
 
 'Baron Munchausen did.' 
 
 She laughed again. 'I hear the luncheon bell/ 
 she said. 
 
 The passengers all lunched on deck at two long 
 tables. It was pleasanter far than in the hot saloon. 
 They sat just as they wished, or as luck seated them. 
 They were not bound by any iron rule. Therefore 
 the meals were pleasant and full of change. 
 
 The early afternoon passed in a half-dream. 
 The hot sun gave a drowsiness, the glowing hour 
 a peace. Then they woke up for tea, which Mrs. 
 Holman made for her own party.
 
 7 o ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 To them were added a Mr. and Mrs. Graham, 
 and the seven became almost a family. They drew 
 together naturally as like to like. They sat together? 
 talked together, and after tea the men played bridge. 
 
 And so they dropped into the ship routine, which 
 consists of doing nothing in long pleasant intervals, 
 with meals for commas and nights for periods. 
 
 No one does anything on board a ship. You 
 cannot. You have no privacy and no quiet. Yet 
 you are not idle, for the ship works for you. Its 
 heart is ever beating and its arms are waving. That 
 is enough for all. Then the sea calls your eyes and 
 thoughts to it, to far-off vague indefinable things 
 that have no substance, dreams that have no waking, 
 questions that have no answer. 
 
 The hours pass over as the seas pass under you 
 and leave no mark.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THAT night was dark, for a light mist had blown 
 across the sky and hid the stars. The sea looked 
 black, but little phosphorescent touches where it 
 broke relieved its sombreness. It surged against 
 the side, rising and falling in unbroken rhythm. 
 
 The decks were nearly empty, for it was late. 
 Within the smoking-room a few men lingered. 
 Two women stood at the companion-door, their 
 figures clear against the light, and near the rail 
 a man was sitting. Another man came from the 
 darkness, drew a chair forward, and sat down by 
 him. 
 
 'I thought that you had gone to bed,' said Holt. 
 
 'I thought the same of you. But you were not 
 in the cabin, so I came up again.' 
 
 'What think you of the voyage ?' 
 
 'I think it may be pleasant.' 
 
 'So think I. We have no sweepstakes on the run; 
 we have no quoits. We are not tyrannised over by 
 young men and girls who want to have "a jolly 
 time." The ship is slow, but will get there some 
 time, and any time is time enough.' 
 
 71
 
 7 a ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'I want/ said Warden, 'to make a compact with 
 you.' 
 
 The other was silent. Somehow the words im- 
 plied that everything was not well. Warden went 
 on: 
 
 'The voyage is pleasant; we are all good friends. 
 So the beginning is of happy omen. I want the end 
 to be so.' 
 
 'Why should it not be so ?' 
 
 ' It will be so, only let us have an understanding 
 shall we ?' 
 
 Holt moved a little in his chair. A strong sense of 
 discomfort took him. Why put in words that which 
 is best unsaid ? His silence carried with it opposition 
 to something, he knew not what. 
 
 'Listen,' said Warden. 'We have been but two 
 days together one day in Venice, one day on board. 
 We are good friends already because we think that 
 we have met before, and yet there is between us a 
 difficulty rising. If we let it rise ' 
 
 'I know of none.' 
 
 'Yet there is one. It is the girl.' 
 
 'Do not you think,' said Holt, 'that it is better 
 not to talk of women ? ' 
 
 'It is a rule, and a good rule, but every rule has 
 its exception. Do not misunderstand me. Let me 
 tell you what I mean before you jump to a conclusion.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 73 
 
 'Very well. Speak on.' 
 
 'We both like her. It is natural we should. 
 We like to talk to her and sit beside her. The 
 voyage affords us opportunity. There is enough 
 for both.' 
 
 He stopped and smiled. 'Let us play fair. Why 
 should we compete ? It makes discomfort for us 
 both and her. A girl must hate to see two men in 
 rivalry for her favour as if she were a bone and they 
 two dogs.' 
 
 Holt wondered if it were so. 
 
 'I do not suppose,' continued Warden, 'that 
 either you or I have any other object than to pass 
 a pleasant hour. I am not inferring anything. 
 We like her company, possibly she likes ours. Let 
 us share and share alike.' 
 
 Holt was relieved. 'Certainly,' he said, 'and 
 I agree. To-day is mine, to-morrow yours, and the 
 next day mine again ?' 
 
 'Yes, that is what I mean.' 
 
 'Of course,' said Holt, 'it does not bind her. 
 She can talk to either of us or neither of us, or 
 talk to both of us at once.' 
 
 'Of course. But give her a fair chance, and let 
 us give each other fair chances also.' He stopped a 
 moment. 
 
 'Suppose,' said Holt, 'I were in love with her
 
 74 
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 or thought I might be, or it was so with you, would 
 we then make a compact ? Is not a woman for 
 the winning?' 
 
 'The prize of victory ?' 
 
 'Yes. Would he not be a laggard who gave 
 up the fight ? Races are not won by walking all in 
 line.' 
 
 'If it were so/ said Warden, 'that both of us were 
 in love with her, as we are not, still it would make 
 no difference. Love is not a fight.' 
 
 'In the old days men carried off their loves.' 
 
 'No one, in days of old or ever, carried off a girl 
 who was unwilling, unless he was a madman. Flight 
 was a weapon not against the woman, but against 
 that which kept the woman from the man. Theirs 
 is the decision. Men may fight; the woman gives 
 the prize to whom she wills to the last or to the 
 first.' 
 
 And Holt knew that it was true. A woman is not 
 won. Because she is not won she is the greater 
 treasure. That which we earn or take we do not 
 care for, that which is given us free is what we prize. 
 Love is a gift. It has no price. A man would give 
 everything in the world for love, but it would be 
 utterly contemned. 
 
 ' I do not know,' said Warden, ' if you are in love 
 with her or ever will be. I do not know if I shall
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 75 
 
 ever be. I am not a marrying man; my regiment 
 is my home. But if we should be, then the decision 
 still will rest with her. Our compact has no refer- 
 ence to that or could affect it. But it will preserve 
 our friendship and make things pleasanter all round.' 
 
 Holt looked across the night. Far off a steamer 
 passed, her lights a fallen constellation on the sea. 
 
 'So be it.' 
 
 Then they sat and smoked in silence. A peace 
 was on them and a comradeship that came from 
 that forgotten past. Let the future hold what it 
 might, the past and present would be true. 
 
 Yet when he was alone and Warden gone, his 
 thoughts came back and troubled him. 
 
 What had Warden meant ? Nothing, perhaps, 
 except just what he said, that any sort of competition 
 for a girl's favour, for her company, is in bad form. 
 He had not inferred he was in love with her, and 
 indeed he showed no signs of it, nor that Holt was. 
 Perhaps, too, if he had thought Holt was he 
 would have feared to touch the subject. He had 
 spoken in all frankness. And yet his words had 
 roused ideas he had not meant. 
 
 Holt looked into the night as if the dark might 
 hold some sign for him, with mental eyes he tried 
 to see into himself. 
 
 Was he in love ? Was the discomfort that he
 
 76 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 felt the stirring of the pool, and was this girl the 
 angel ? 
 
 He knew that he had never loved before. Women 
 had drawn him for a moment and then passed 
 into forgetfulness. Perhaps she also would do 
 so. And yet she was not as the others. Love ? 
 What was love; how should one know if it 
 had come ? How did she differ from those other 
 women who had come and gone ? Her eyes were 
 clear and soft, but so were many women's. Her 
 cheeks were full and fair, her round red lips made 
 for the kissing. But so were the cheeks and lips 
 of many women. All this might be, must be a 
 part of love. It could not be the whole. 
 
 What then was love ? 
 
 Was it that the girl was clever, witty, that she 
 talked and made him talk and think ? 
 
 He did not know if she was clever or was not. 
 He did not care. She did not talk. He remem- 
 bered now that she said little. Though he tried 
 he could not remember anything she had said, nor 
 did she make him think. 
 
 Her presence troubled him. When he sat beside 
 her his heart beat quicker and his breath was hotter. 
 His brain was full of things that came and went and 
 had no shape, like winds that blew across the sea. 
 Was this love ?
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 77 
 
 Then he remembered a story Hafiz tells about 
 a Sultan and his favourite page. The page was 
 full of life and gaiety and happiness. He made 
 the laughter of the Court, his bright carelessness 
 was like a sunbeam in the palace. The Sultan 
 would have given a hundred ministers for him. 
 He disappeared. 
 
 The Court was dull without the page, the Sultan 
 sent throughout the city. 'Where is the Sultan's 
 page?' the heralds cried in every street and lane. 
 The Sultan missed him, asked for him. At last his 
 messengers came back and said: 'The Sultan's 
 page is ill. He sits alone beside the desert and he 
 looks into the distance. Nothing can move him and 
 his eyes are full of tears.' 
 
 The Sultan called his Vizier. 'Let the hakims 
 go and medicine my page, for he is ill. He sits 
 beside the desert and his eyes are closed. Surely 
 he is in pain, and he may die. Lo ! I will give half 
 of my treasure to him who brings me back my page 
 such as he used to be.' 
 
 The Vizier laughed. 'The page/ he said, 'is ill in 
 truth, and yet no hakims even of paradise could cure 
 him. The page is ill, yet he is happier in his sickness 
 than the well. The page's eyes have tears, but they 
 are sweeter than all laughter in the world. He hath 
 in truth a sickness, but he will not die/
 
 7 8 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'It is some madness,' said the Sultan. 
 
 'It is some madness. There is mystery in his 
 head and in his heart a flame.' 
 
 'Whence comes this fire and mist?' the Sultan 
 asked. 
 
 The Vizier laughed again. 'They call it love.' 
 
 The Sultan sighed. 'My page is lost to me,' 
 he said. 'Never again will he be what he was.' 
 
 They call it love. They give a name to that 
 which no man understands. They call it love, as 
 if that were an answer. 
 
 The ship had passed. Its lights had died into 
 the distance. The mists that veiled the heavens had 
 cleared, and overhead Orion hung his belt. The 
 distances reopened. 
 
 Then what is love ? 
 
 The surges rose and fell. They dashed against 
 the side. The ocean sang its everlasting song. 
 
 'I know what love is. Who shall know but I? 
 He who would learn must ask me. I am love; 
 the sea that rolls about the world and beats on all the 
 shores is love incarnate, love and hate, and hope and 
 fear, and birth and death, for all are one. Myriads 
 of drops have died in me and from them I am born. 
 Alone what life is in a drop of water; in a man, a 
 woman ? Each must die and win thereby a wider 
 life, and so the sea is born, the sea of immortality.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 79 
 
 'You ask me what is love ? It is that force that 
 drains two drops to one and in the end all to the 
 sea.' 
 
 That is the ocean song. 
 
 He listened and he understood. 'If that be 
 love,' he said, 'I will not love. Why should I 
 lose myself? How shall I know, be sure, that by 
 so losing I should find my wider self? And is it 
 true that man's love to a woman is but the begin- 
 ning of an ever-widening love ? Why should I 
 give myself? I do not and I will not. I will not.' 
 
 What makes the twinkle in the stars when they 
 look down on men ?
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 'Do you know,' said Mrs. Holman, 'we all have 
 names ?' 
 
 The girl looked up. 'What sort of names, and 
 who gave them to us ? ' 
 
 'Ship names, and it seems the giver is Captain 
 Warden, or he and Mr. Holt together.' 
 
 'What do they call us ? ' 
 
 'The Indian girl they call "the little Princess." 
 That is a good name. She has a dignity and grace.' 
 
 Miss Ormond nodded. 'I like her, she is so 
 quiet and yet so clever.' 
 
 'Her two admirers they call Hamlet and Othello. 
 Hamlet because he is a Dane, Othello because 
 he comes from Venice and has a dark complexion, 
 also it appears because he is jealous.' 
 
 'Has she admirers?' asked Miss Ormond. 
 
 'You have no eyes, my dear. They follow her 
 about. They are in competition for her favour. 
 She is amused at them.' 
 
 The girl was silent, thinking. There seemed to 
 her something jarring in the eternal pursuit by 
 men of women. Had women then no peace unless 
 
 80
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 81 
 
 they were ugly ? And did men only care for them 
 to make love to ? 
 
 'And then,' said Mrs. Holman, 'these imper- 
 tinent men have named us, too. Harry and I are 
 Darby and Joan, and you they call "the girl." 
 
 '"The girl"?' she asked; '"the girl"? Is 
 that a name ? It has no special meaning.' 
 
 'It has,' said Mrs. Holman, 'a meaning per- 
 haps more special than any of the others/ 
 
 'I think it rude,' she answered, 'to give names.' 
 
 The annoyance was but momentary and passed. 
 Mrs. Holman went below and she was left alone. 
 She looked along the decks at the people sitting 
 in twos or threes, and Holt's talk of yesterday 
 returned. Then every one who lives has, if he 
 knew it, something different from all the rest, 
 something the world has need of. Every one is 
 part of a great whole. The life of every one has 
 in it some special meaning. The meaning may be 
 great or small. We may have many talents or but 
 one. All of us have at least one talent, and the 
 world has need of that. What special meaning 
 had each of these people who looked for the most 
 part so plain and commonplace ? If there was any, 
 it was well hidden. The men, she could under- 
 stand, might have each a meaning in that each had 
 his work which the world needed. But the women ?
 
 82 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 As far as she could see no woman had a meaning 
 except to one man. There were exceptions, maybe 
 a Florence Nightingale, a Rosa Bonheur; but of 
 all the women on the ship, which had any meaning 
 to the world ? They were wives of men, called by 
 their husband's names, branded as belonging to 
 men. Had women then never any value in them- 
 selves, did they mean nothing ? Did she herself 
 mean nothing except that she might some day be 
 a man's wife ? Was life so empty and so narrow ? 
 Beside the lifeboat, in a corner kept always for them, 
 sat the five nuns. There rested on them a sense of 
 calm and dignity. They looked quite happy as 
 they read, or talked in short, slow sentences. No 
 man was near them. They were meant for no man. 
 They lived their lives apart. What was their mean- 
 ing to the world ? Or was it that they had drawn 
 from out the world because they had no meaning 
 for it nor it for them. 
 
 The youngest Sister, Cecilia, caught her look 
 and smiled an invitation. The girl drew her chair 
 beside them. 
 
 'You are so quiet,' she said; 'nothing troubles 
 you.' 
 
 'There is nothing to trouble us. Perhaps it 
 bothers you that the ship is so slow. Perhaps you 
 are in a hurry to get somewhere.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 83 
 
 'No,' said the girl, 'I do not care; I am not going 
 anywhere in particular, and I don't care how long 
 it takes. I have nothing to do there nor anywhere/ 
 
 The Sister looked at her. 'That is the differ- 
 ence. We know whither we go, and it is not the 
 ship that takes us. Whether she is still or travels 
 we go forward to our end.' 
 
 The girl was silent. She knew what the nun 
 meant. Their lives were directed towards some 
 object, towards some end, and no matter where 
 their bodies were, their souls travelled always to it. 
 
 'Is it a pleasant end?' 
 
 'Surely.' The Sister looked up and smiled, 
 and in her eyes there was a certainty of happiness 
 and content. 
 
 'Tell me, where are you going?' 
 
 Another Sister answered, the eldest Sister, Teresa, 
 who was in charge of the party. Perhaps she did 
 not know what the question meant. Perhaps she 
 wished to avoid the deeper meaning. 
 
 'We are not all going together to the same place. 
 We separate at Bombay and go to different convents, 
 some in Bengal, some elsewhere. Sister Cecilia 
 goes to Calcutta, but I to the west coast of Madras.' 
 
 'Have you been there before?' 
 
 She shook her head. 'None of us have been there, 
 or we should not be on board.'
 
 84 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Then you will not return?' 
 
 Both Sisters shook their heads, and it seemed 
 for the moment as if a sadness took them as when 
 a cloud veils the sun. 
 
 For, after all, to every one who lives there is a 
 country and a people. Whatever you may be, 
 whatever your end in life, nothing will alter that, 
 will make you quite forget it, will stop the strong 
 desire for home. And to leave home for ever, to 
 know and realise it is for ever, that never more will 
 your eyes behold its light, never more will you hear 
 its voices, brings heaviness to the heart. But it 
 passed and the light returned. 
 
 'It is very hot on the coast of Malabar,' said Sister 
 Teresa. 'It is hot for all the year. It is never 
 cool. For myself, I like the heat/ She laughed. 
 
 'Where I go,' said Sister Cecilia, 'it is cool in 
 winter, but in the summer it is hotter than on her 
 side. So it comes to the same thing.' 
 
 ' And you go to convert the people ? ' 
 
 Both Sisters shook their heads. 'We are not 
 missionaries. That is men's work; it is for priests 
 and not for us. We go to live our lives; that is the 
 first thing, and then we have schools for the little 
 girls and try to teach them what we can. It makes 
 life better.' 
 
 'I am sorry,' said the girl; 'I did not know.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 85 
 
 I never talked to nuns before. I only heard of 
 them.' 
 
 'Not always good, perhaps/ 
 
 The girl coloured. 'Perhaps those who told 
 me did not know much either. I always supposed 
 you were unhappy.' 
 
 'Are we unhappy?' 
 
 The girl shook her head. ' I never saw any people 
 so happy as you seem.' 
 
 'Say as we are.' 
 
 'I am sure it is "as you are." : 
 
 'Why should we be unhappy ?' asked the younger 
 Sister. 
 
 'I do not know, only I supposed from what I 
 
 was told ' She began to feel uncomfortable, 
 
 but a look at the Sisters reassured her. They were 
 amused and not offended amused as a grown 
 person is with a child's misunderstandings. Yet 
 even Sister Teresa was not much older than she 
 was. 
 
 'Because we were here?' 
 
 'That was one reason.' 
 
 ' Because we had renounced the pleasures of the 
 world?' 
 
 'Yes, and because ' 
 
 'Because we had no husbands?' 
 
 The girl blushed, but the nuns were full of merri-
 
 86 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 ment. It touched them as a summer breeze touches 
 a lake, calling up ripples. 
 
 'Yes,' she said, gaining courage, 'because of all 
 these things, and I supposed no one became a nun 
 except from some disappointment. 
 
 'I have been told that women ought to marry, 
 that there is nothing else for them to do. If then 
 they become nuns, it is because they have failed in 
 some way of their only end/ 
 
 'And become nuns to hide themselves and make 
 the best of it?' Sister Teresa laughed. 
 
 'Yes, or because they had to; because they were 
 forced.' 
 
 The Sisters became more serious, as if though 
 they could afford to laugh at the first idea the last 
 were unkind and bitter. They lowered their faces. 
 And the girl became unhappy again. She had 
 offended them because she had said the truth. 
 But Sister Teresa raised her face and said : ' Do 
 you think that I was forced?' 
 
 The girl looked at her, looked in her eyes, so 
 clear and so serene, at the expression of her face, 
 where self-mastery and courage and content were 
 clearly written. She turned to Sister Cecilia and 
 read the same things there, and she found her 
 answer. 
 
 'No!' she said clearly and assuredly.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 87 
 
 'It was because you did not understand,' they 
 answered kindly; and a great desire came upon 
 her to understand. 
 
 At first she had been half-afraid of the nuns, 
 fearing that they would try to convert her make 
 her into a Catholic, if not a nun herself. She had 
 doubted if it were safe to be friends with them; 
 she kept on her guard as against an insidious foe. 
 But when she herself had come and talked to them 
 they never spoke of religion at all, and even now 
 when she opened the subject they were almost shy; 
 they did not respond. They turned the subject, 
 talking of Ireland, from which most of them had 
 come originally; of France, where they had been in 
 convents; of the ship life, of India, of everything 
 but their beliefs. Far from pressing them upon 
 her they kept them hidden, as if they possessed a 
 great treasure which they were proud of, indeed as 
 the conspicuousness of their dress showed, but which 
 they desired to keep to themselves, lest it should be 
 profaned by vulgar touch or sight. 
 
 Yet as inevitably as a needle to the North the 
 girl came back to what she wished to know. 
 
 'I would like to understand,' she said. 
 
 But they were silent, sewing quietly. 
 
 ' Will you not tell me ? ' 
 
 Sister Teresa raised her face and looked. In
 
 88 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 the girl's face there was a trouble, there was a 
 need. 
 
 'Will you not tell me ?' she asked again. 
 
 'I do not know,' and the Sister shook her head. 
 'You are not of our religion. You have your own.' 
 
 'Mine tells me only that women ought to marry/ 
 
 'A priest could tell you better. We are only 
 simple women.' 
 
 ' I do not ask it of your religion, but of you/ and 
 woman's eyes looked into woman's eyes. 'A woman 
 can tell a woman. I do not want the ideas of a man, 
 whether he be priest or layman, but a woman's.' 
 
 The Sister was troubled. Her heart went out 
 towards the girl, and yet her words repelled her. 
 'Truth is truth,' she thought, 'whether man or 
 woman say it, and the Church's truth is in the 
 Church.' 
 
 'Why should you wish to know,' she asked, 'and 
 what ? Do not you know what nuns are ?' 
 
 'No!' the girl replied. 'I do not know. It 
 is true that I have been told, but I see now that 
 what I was told was wrong.' 
 
 'I am glad of that,' the Sister answered. 'Yes, 
 what is told is often wrong, but what is seen and 
 is felt is true. The mind seeks always, but it is 
 the heart alone that finds.' 
 
 'Why are you all so happy ?'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 89 
 
 The Sister smiled. 'I might answer you in 
 two ways. I might say as a Catholic and as a 
 Sister that we are happy because we trust in God 
 and know Him, because we have given ourselves 
 to Him and He has given His peace to us. I might 
 tell you that and it would be true, yet you would not 
 understand.' 
 
 'Because I am not a Catholic ?' 
 
 'Not for that reason only. There are many 
 Catholic women of whom but few have given them- 
 selves to religion, and those who have not know as 
 little of our secret as you do. There are Sisters in 
 other faiths who feel as we do not, perhaps, all 
 our happiness, but some of it.' 
 
 'Is it then because you are Sisters and have 
 renounced all that the world holds worth the having 
 that you are happy?' 
 
 'No ! It is not what we have renounced but what 
 we have gained that makes us happy. And yet 
 that gain is not for all, for if that were true then 
 should all women be as we are ! ' 
 
 'And they should not?' 
 
 The Sister shook her head. 
 
 'What is the secret then of happiness ?' 
 
 'There is no universal secret. Do you think 
 one truth suffices for all women or all men ? The 
 world is various, and to every one there is a truth
 
 9 o ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 never quite the same as that of others. There is 
 a ray of light that, added to the others, makes the 
 white light of God. No one can tell you what yours 
 is/ 
 
 'How can I learn ?' 
 
 'It is in your own heart, in the heart of every 
 man and every woman. There only will you find 
 it. How to find it and keep it is the secret of all 
 happiness. Look at the happy men and women ! 
 It is they who know that they keep their truth/ 
 
 'And truth is many?' 
 
 'Truths, could we see them, are very many, 
 yet in the end all truth is One. All truths are 
 necessary to the Truth.' 
 
 'If you are happy, then it is because God has 
 put it into your heart to renounce the world and 
 men and pleasure, and live the lives you do ? There 
 is no virtue in the life itself, or in the deeds, or in 
 the sacrifice of self?' 
 
 'Not unless it is in your heart to do it. Some 
 women are born to be married and have children; 
 they keep their truth in doing so, and it would be 
 for them a sin to be as we are. But others as our- 
 selves have put into our hearts a love for Christ 
 alone, and we would never let another love replace 
 it.' 
 
 'A lower love ?'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 91 
 
 'My dear, there is no higher and no lower. For 
 every truth is true.' 
 
 The girl was silent, thinking. She felt a dis- 
 appointment. She sought to have a truth given 
 to her, and she was told to find it for herself. How 
 should she find it ? How should she know ? 
 
 Sister Teresa read her thoughts, as she had read 
 those of other women before her. 
 
 'You thought,' she said, 'that we should advise 
 you to be a nun yourself, and we do not do so. You 
 asked us for our secret, and we have given you 
 nothing.' 
 
 'You have made me think.' 
 
 'You will not find a truth in thinking/ 
 
 'I want to know what I should do in life, how I 
 should find its happiness.' 
 
 'And you thought we could tell you?' 
 
 'Yes. You have it.' 
 
 'We have it, but so have others. Mrs. Holman 
 has it; ask her the secret.' 
 
 'She is married.' 
 
 ' And you do not want to marry ?' 
 
 'I think not.' 
 
 'Some day you will be sure, one way or another. 
 The true things in life are those that are inevitable. 
 If, indeed, God has made you to be a nun, He will 
 tell you so. If He means you to marry, He will
 
 92 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 tell you so. In the great things of life never act 
 until you must, until you cannot help it. No one 
 can tell you the secret of happiness but God.' 
 
 It was their hour for evening prayers, and the 
 nuns rose up and went away. But the girl sat 
 still. How hard life was, and how could one ever 
 know what it was right to do ? The Sister said 
 that truth would come, her heart would tell her; 
 but so far her heart said only No. Suppose it 
 always kept on saying No, she might as well be a 
 limpet on a rock that even the tides cannot move. 
 And of what value would be such a life ?
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ONE day they came on deck to find the ship was 
 motionless. Her engines had broken down, and 
 so she lay like some great wounded thing upon the 
 sea. A light wind blew, and the little waves came 
 racing up to see her, wondering what was this 
 black and ugly thing that lay so still, that was 
 dead they thought. They raised their heads to 
 look at her; they laughed, they splashed their spray 
 upon her in derision. And then they danced away 
 gaily, joyfully, singing their ocean song, and glanc- 
 ing back in mockery over their lucent shoulders at 
 the uncanny monster. 
 
 Above the northern horizon hung a peak sus- 
 pended in the heavens. You could not see its 
 base. The purple haze was folded over it and 
 hid it; but in the clear sky above, the sharp rock- 
 summit stood revealed in clearest outline. The 
 golden sunlight fell upon it like a glory, and upon 
 its shoulders fields of purest snow shone like a 
 woman's skin gleaming through openings of her 
 drapery. 
 
 93
 
 9* ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Bat the ship's restfulness gave unrest to those 
 on board. While she had throbbed and moved 
 they had been content to rest, allowing her move- 
 ment to stand lor theirs. They had been soothed, 
 lulled bj her action as children by a cradle's rock- 
 ing. But when she stopped, uneasiness attacked 
 diem. They could not sit, could not read, could 
 hardly talk. They paced up and down as if to 
 deceive themselves into the belief that they were 
 doing something; and when they stopped it was to 
 gaze at the island far away. It gave their eyes a 
 point to rest on, tired with the formless sea and sky, 
 as a bird requires land to support it now and then. 
 
 Only the nuns were quiet; nothing ever 
 touched their peace. And the Professor, sitting 
 in a long chair with book and pencil, seemed full 
 of satisfaction. He read a little and made notes. 
 He looked along the decks and laughed. He made 
 more notes. 
 
 'This book,' he wrote, 'by my worthy brother, 
 Qearasmud of Gotringen, is a painful and praise- 
 worthy history of primitive marriage customs. He 
 has read, he has collected, he has digested, he 
 has deduced. It is a monument of industry. 
 Yet had my learned brother left his study in that 
 great and ancient city and descended into its streets; 
 had he, instead of reading books on marriage long
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 95 
 
 ago, tried to find out a little of marriage to-day; 
 had he, in fact, just learned the psychology of love, 
 if not by painful experience in himself, yet by ob- 
 servation, he might have learned a good deal that 
 would have prevented him mating an ass of himself.' 
 
 The Professor put down his pen and smiled. 
 'Of course I shall have to alter that last,' he said 
 to himself; 'we mustn't call each other names 
 even if the names are true.' He laughed out 
 cheerily and startled Hamlet, who was dozing near 
 him. The young man pulled his chair round the 
 corner, away from the Professor, with ostentatious 
 annoyance, but the Professor did not mind. 
 
 'In primitive times,' says Clearasmud, 'mar- 
 riage was done by capture. The young men were 
 forbidden to marry in their own dans, and had to 
 capture their wives from clans that had other to- 
 tems. A wolf could not marry a wolf, nor a rabbit 
 marry a rabbit. The young wolf-brave, then, 
 when the marriage thirst came on him, went out 
 with his companions and waited beside a stream 
 or some such likely place rill a squirrel or an eel 
 maiden came down to draw her family water or 
 to bathe. He jumped out with fierce cries of love; 
 she ran; he pursued with his companions. The 
 girl doubled, dodged, hid; but finally her lover 
 overtook her, and then after ralming her cries and
 
 96 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 agitation with his club, he dragged her off by the 
 hair. Such was the primitive marriage by cap- 
 ture. It was unromantic.' The Professor laughed 
 again, but he had his corner to himself. 
 
 'He writes ingeniously,' he remarked; 'he argues 
 with great subtlety. He is not unworthy as an 
 antagonist. He puts the deduction first, and states 
 it as a fact. Then he takes his tiny misobserved 
 fact and adds it on behind. Thus he appears to 
 have two solid facts supporting each other, when 
 he has really but one very slender fact fluttering 
 forlornly at the tail of an absurd deduction. No 
 one knows that primitive marriage was as he says. 
 It is a pure hypothesis and founded on no facts. 
 Let us look at what he calls his facts. 
 
 'There have been observed among semi-civilised 
 people in various parts of the world a marriage 
 ceremony, or, rather, a pre-marriage ceremony, 
 which, varying in details, is much the same in 
 principle. 
 
 'The girl on foot or mounted, accompanied or 
 not by other girls, runs away. The groom pur- 
 sues. He is impeded by the girl's relatives, by 
 her friends; he has a fairly rough time of it. The 
 girl escapes, turns, hides; is often faster and more 
 active than he is. But in the end she is always 
 caught. He captures her and she is his.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 97 
 
 'That is the fact, the only fact, and that im- 
 perfectly observed, on which he builds his theories. 
 Imperfectly observed, for he has omitted the be- 
 ginning and the end of it. In the beginning the 
 girl lures on the man to follow her. She looks at 
 him over her shoulder as she runs. So he pursues. 
 The end is also wrong, for the girl is never really 
 captured. She could escape had she the will. 
 The groom could never catch her. She runs at 
 first from instinct, but she never really wishes to 
 escape. Therefore she does not run too fast; she 
 tires before he does, stops, and gives herself in the 
 end always. 
 
 'That is the error of my worthy brother, and 
 it leads him into wildest phantasy of common- 
 place. No madness is so absurd as science when 
 divorced from feeling. He makes a theory that 
 early men carried off their wives by force, that 
 before the ceremony of the club they were utter 
 strangers, that the woman had no say in all of it. 
 He thinks that a man, even a savage, is such an 
 idiot that he knows no better than to allow chance 
 or his choice alone to decide who shall be his other 
 half through life, the mother of his children. He 
 supposes that women are built to forgive brutality 
 from an utter stranger, the violence, nay, more, the 
 being deprived of their right to give themselves,
 
 98 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 and that so brutalised they would make wives. 
 He ignores the god called Love that was from the 
 beginning, in animals, in insects, and in plants. A 
 world unknown of love/ 
 
 The Professor laughed again a hearty laugh. 
 'Dere is not a leetle girl but could tell him better/ 
 
 'What could the little girl tell him, Professor?' 
 asked Warden, looking in. 
 
 The Professor winked a wink. No, it was not 
 professional, but professors are only men at least 
 the best of them are. And then the Professor was 
 glad, for had he not Clearasmud on the hip ? He 
 winked and said, 'Why are you walking to and 
 fro so hungry ?' 
 
 'Because it is not lunch-time yet/ 
 
 'And tell me, where is Miss Ormond then ?' 
 
 Warden looked at him with suspicion. 'But 
 you can see, Professor, she is talking to the nuns. 
 What do you want with her? Is she the little girl 
 who could tell better?' 
 
 'Go! go!' said the Professor. 'I write and 
 you disturb/ 
 
 Warden disappeared and the Professor's notes 
 continued. 
 
 ' My brother Clearasmud, let me expound to you. 
 Your facts are wrong, your deductions wrong, you 
 are all wrong. You think what you write of is of
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 99 
 
 the long past, that it is history, and will occur no 
 more. You think that there is evolution in mar- 
 riage and that it changes; you think that in this 
 matter human nature has varied. Oh, Clearasmud, 
 were you never a student in Gottingen, or were there 
 then no maidens that you saw in the past days ? 
 Had you no eyes ? 
 
 * Marriage by capture ! long ago ! a total 
 stranger ! the woman with no choice at all ! Oh, 
 Clearasmud, even a beetle could tell you more 
 than all your history! 
 
 'Man loves all women. You have observed 
 that, and you think that nothing more was wanted. 
 Man had but to take the first woman and all would 
 be well. Nature gave him this universal love for 
 her own reasons, that he should help and protect 
 all women. But marriage is more than that, and 
 is the product of a special love, and nature wills 
 that this love be proved. 
 
 'Nature therefore makes maidens coy. Man 
 loves, pursues; the maiden runs and hides. He 
 stops. She is not worth the pursuing. He tries 
 another and another. But they all run. Then 
 one looks back. She runs, but as she goes she 
 beckons. She does not stop, for he must prove 
 he loves her prove it to himself and her. He 
 follows, he falls, he suffers; enemies trip him, hunt
 
 ioo ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 him, would kill him, still he follows. The girl's 
 flight has proved to him which girl he really loves. 
 It weeds out all faint and elementary emotions and 
 only leaves the greater. So does nature tell man 
 which woman he would make a wife of. She 
 makes him suffer for his knowledge, but still he 
 gains it. And the girl's running shows that she is 
 innocent, afraid; that she has had no former lover, 
 that she is not accepted within the mystic circle. 
 She is a neophyte. She runs, he follows. 
 
 'Now take the girl. To every normal girl in 
 every normal society, savage or civilised, there 
 come many men, and of these men some are at- 
 tracted. She repels them, flies from them; they 
 stop. Then comes one different from the others. 
 She flies, but she looks back. He follows. She 
 hides among the women, but looks out. Nature 
 has proved to her that the man loves her, and she 
 knows that she loves him or she would never have 
 looked back across her shoulder. She lets herself 
 be caught; she gives herself at last. 
 
 'No, Clearasmud, you are wrong if you think 
 that woman, savage or modern, is to be stunned 
 and captured and then will make a faithful wife. 
 The faithful wives are those who give themselves. 
 There must be giving on either side. There must 
 be love on either side a different love of course,
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 101 
 
 but yet a love. The woman is never passive. If 
 she be passive before marriage she becomes active 
 afterwards in the wrong way. The life and 
 happiness of man, savage or civilised, is at his 
 wife's mercy. Nature knows that, and she knows 
 better than to let him take a snake to his bosom. 
 His instinct will not let him. Unless he be mad, 
 he tires when she flies too far and fast and looks 
 not back to encourage him to follow. He tires 
 and stops. He loves; she does not. That will 
 not do. You want two yes-es to be an affirma- 
 tive. So though she runs she must look back over 
 her shoulder from the very first. She must let 
 him catch her in the end. And though he use the 
 club to complete his capture, it must be at the call 
 of her desire, not his. So, my unlearned brother, 
 what you took to be a relic of a barbarian custom 
 is nothing of the sort, it is a mystery play. 
 
 'It is a mystery play not of the past, but of all 
 time; it has a truth that is not dead, but lives. The 
 man who made this play knew of that truth, and 
 those who watched it understood. They knew 
 their world. They knew that there were great 
 true forces, great true loves that join man and 
 woman and make the future of the world. This 
 could never have evolved under the rule of chance. 
 They knew and felt the spirit. But the heir of
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 all the ages, Clearasmud, sees in the world only 
 the club, the spear, the brute. He never raises 
 his eyes. So he has fallen below the savage, below 
 animals, below even the insects and the fish. He 
 thinks that evolution's God was chance and force 
 in man, and that woman has no God to care for 
 her at all or live within her. 
 'And that is science!' 
 
 The Professor shut his note-book with a bang. 
 'I wish that you were here upon this ship, my 
 learned brother, and I would make you see things. 
 I would show you that what you think is of the 
 long dead past is of the present. There are two 
 mystery plays begun. 
 
 'In each play there is a girl and two men. 
 'One girl is English; the men who follow her 
 are English. She has looked back at both of them, I 
 think, though more perhaps at one than at the other. 
 'The two men follow. And now a fear has 
 taken her. She runs the faster and she begins to 
 hide. She hides amongst the women, as they all 
 do. She clings to her own personality and sex as 
 soon as instinct warns her of her danger. The 
 men are troubled. They ran for fun at first, but 
 now they ask themselves the question if she is 
 worth pursuit. She asks herself the question will 
 she be pursued ; if so, by whom ?
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 103 
 
 'Will they both follow still? Will she look 
 back ? If so, at which of them ? I wish, my 
 brother, you could watch my mystery play. 
 
 'The other girl is Indian. Her lovers are a 
 Dane and an Italian. With her it has not gone so 
 far. The play is just beginning, and she beckons 
 to them both. She has not begun to fear nor run. 
 
 'My worthy primitive Professor Clearasmud, 
 I think that you could learn more on this ship 
 than from all the books that you have read; more 
 of the present, more of the past. You think you 
 find a key to read the present in the past. More 
 truly will you find in life to-day a way to unlock 
 the secrets of the past. The master-key to all 
 evolution is not chance, but love. Animals and 
 men rise as they love; they fall as love leaves them.' 
 
 'Professor,' said Holt, 'you have some joke. 
 Tell it to me. I find the ship life somewhat tire- 
 some.' 
 
 'You find it tiresome?' said the Professor, with 
 mock sympathy. 
 
 'Lend me a book.' 
 
 'Take then this book. Read it with care.' 
 
 'I will.' 
 
 'Then disbelieve it all,' and the Professor laughed.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 So the Marckesa lounged through autumn seas 
 towards Port Said. She was in no hurry and she 
 broke no records. Big liners passed her by con- 
 temptuously; lateen-sailed boats from out the 
 islands of the Ionian Sea almost kept pace with 
 her. She knew the world was round, and that the 
 sooner to her destinations the sooner she would 
 come back again. Therefore why hurry ? Life is 
 in the going and the coming, not in the end be- 
 cause there is no end. 
 
 And every day the men felt that the girl was 
 leaving them. She talked to them still, but the 
 talks were shorter. She listened, but her thoughts 
 were not with what they said. A new idea of life 
 was dawning in her East. She saw far off a land 
 she had not dreamt of, lit with new lights, and 
 where shadows were of pearl. She wondered if it 
 were real, or but a phantasy of dawn. 
 
 Into Holt's heart there came a sense of lone- 
 liness, a helplessness as when a man sees that which 
 he desires drift down the stream beyond his reach. 
 
 104
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 105 
 
 He would have seized her and drawn her to him, 
 but he could not. He only could follow on the 
 bank, and hope some eddy in the stream would 
 draw her nearer. All streams flow to the sea, and 
 there all things are lost. 
 
 Perhaps, as some compensation, the other life on 
 board the ship came nearer to him. He seemed 
 to understand it more, that the tie was real that 
 made humanity all one. If his brain was slow, 
 his sensitiveness made amends by being quicker; 
 he saw with keener eyes. 
 
 The little Princess and her lovers amused him. 
 She was so frankly pleased with them. Perhaps 
 in all her life this was the first time that men had 
 wooed her. She found it pleasant, and she gave 
 herself to it without a doubting thought. Soon 
 she would come into a new morrow where all this 
 life and Europe would be a yesterday. Why not 
 take what the gods were offering her ? When 
 Hamlet came and said that there were porpoises 
 upon the bows, she went with him to look. She 
 had seen a hundred shoals of porpoises. What 
 matter ? The forward deck was empty. To lean 
 upon an anchor fluke and watch the spray dashed 
 from the bows, to mark the gambols of the black 
 sea-pigs, so joyous in their dances, to feel the fresh 
 sea wind, all these in company, were they not
 
 io6 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 well ? Hamlet was taciturn, but comradeship lies 
 not in spoken words. At night Othello played on 
 the guitar and sang. Sometimes she made accom- 
 paniment on the piano or played a waltz of Chopin's. 
 Music alone has lost its fulness; we sing or play 
 not to ourselves, but others. Othello to the Princess, 
 and she to him made harmony. Why not ? 
 
 If Hamlet's white face looking through the win- 
 dow from the outer dark seemed like a tortured 
 ghost, that, too, came into the music, the govern- 
 ing discord that it needed. To-morrow there would 
 be new porpoises, no doubt; and to Othello por- 
 poises were poison. Each to his time, and both 
 times for the Princess. So was there played a little 
 comedy. Sometimes, indeed, Warden or Holt took 
 hands. Each had his favourite. Warden's was 
 Hamlet, and Holt's was Othello. They sought for 
 chances, each to help his own man and keep the 
 balance steady between the North and South, 
 music and porpoises. Did Hamlet linger too long 
 upon the forward deck, a messenger would fetch 
 him back to skittles. Did Othello's songs become 
 too numerous and melancholy, Warden joined in 
 and sang 'John Peel.' Perhaps a consciousness 
 that she was being protected delicately, dawned 
 sometimes upon the Indian girl, and made her still 
 more gay and careless.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 107 
 
 'And yet,' said Warden, 'it does not seem possi- 
 ble that she should marry either, or that either 
 should marry her/ 
 
 'Probably,' said Holt, 'none of the three are 
 thinking of it. They laugh and play while the sun 
 shines. If it should get too hot, or the rain should 
 come, they will all go home.' 
 
 'You know,' said Warden, 'that what attracts 
 the men about the girl is her romance. It seems 
 to them that to be Indian is to have stepped out of 
 the Arabian Nights and to be able to step back 
 there again. Last night Hamlet was asking me all 
 about India.' 
 
 'What did you tell him ?' 
 
 'I told him what you or any one else would tell 
 him, that to go to India is to change one's skies, and 
 that is all. We live in India, but we are not of India.' 
 
 'Yes, it is true,' said Holt. 'We have forced 
 our company upon her, but she holds herself away 
 from us. We live our own lives. As far as know- 
 ing India goes, we might for the most of us be in 
 England. We know but little, and that wrong, 
 because we are tempted to think we know more 
 than we do. There is romance about their lives 
 still. They have not bound themselves to a ma- 
 chine called "progress," as we have. But that 
 romance does not touch us.'
 
 io8 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Therefore it does not exist for us,' said Warden. 
 'That is what I told him. But he would not be- 
 lieve it.' 
 
 'He thinks she is a key?' 
 
 'Yes, and for her it is the same. The West is 
 to her as the East to Hamlet and Othello. She 
 has lived in Germany three years while she grew 
 to be a woman. She has been dazzled with the 
 strength of Europe, with its matured power, its 
 art, its music. A Western seems to her to have 
 the magic ring and to be able to call up genii by 
 rubbing it. She is leaving it. Perhaps in some 
 unconscious way she feels that Hamlet and Othello 
 hold her to it, give her re-entrance.' 
 
 'The men are attracted to the girl, and she to 
 them, because each seems to lead the other to a 
 country where romance is king and the monotony 
 of life is changed.' Holt stopped and laughed. 
 'But I wonder,' he continued, 'if it is not always 
 so with men and women. Each lives in a country 
 to the other quite unknown, though we may think 
 we know something of it. Each wants to pene- 
 trate into a paradise.' 
 
 'But there is always at the gate a dragon,' said 
 Warden. 
 
 'A dragon?' thought Holt. 'No one is afraid 
 to face a dragon. I wish there was one at the
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 109 
 
 gate I want to enter. But it is more difficult to 
 face an angel, even if she have not a flaming sword. 
 Force will not make an entrance. We must be 
 invited/ And it looked as though no invitation 
 would come. The girl was with the nuns. 
 
 There was in him an irritation against these 
 women. What right had they to hold themselves 
 aloof from men as if more holy ? Well, for them- 
 selves it did not matter, but what right had they 
 to filch from a man the girl he wanted, to teach 
 her to despise the world ? They did not know the 
 world, or they would not despise it. Why did not 
 Mrs. Holman interfere ? With their calm faces 
 and their quiet ways these nuns were traps. Yet 
 Mrs. Holman did not notice. Was she blind ? 
 
 No, Mrs. Holman was not blind. On that last 
 night before they reached Port Said she was thinking 
 of it, troubled in her mind. 
 
 At first she had thought the girl attracted towards 
 Holt, then perhaps to Warden, but now it was the 
 nuns. She was often with them, and when not, 
 she was thinking of them. Would she wish to 
 become a nun ? If so, why so ? If not, why not ? 
 There was in her mind no prejudice about religion. 
 For dogma and form she cared nothing. The ques- 
 tion did not present itself to her as one of faith, 
 but one of vocation. A girl might marry, or not
 
 i io ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 marry. If she did not, she might live alone, the 
 solitary life that usually comes to women who do 
 not marry, or she might join a Sisterhood. The 
 question lay between the love of man and the love 
 of God. What did each mean ? 
 
 There came a knock, and Holman entered. 
 
 'Hush!' said his wife; 'the boys are sleeping.' 
 
 He came and stood beside her. 'Minnie,* he 
 said, 'to-morrow we reach Port Said. We must 
 decide. Are we to take Amitie with us or send her 
 back?' 
 
 'Why should we send her back?' 
 
 'If we do not, she will want to become a nun/ 
 
 'Perhaps, perhaps. Do not be in such a hurry. 
 Because she talks to them and is attracted by them ? 
 Who would not be ? I am myself.' 
 
 'There is no danger for you,' laughed Holman; 
 'you are protected.' 
 
 'And she is not? Well, suppose she should wish 
 to be a nun, what then?' 
 
 'Would it not be a pity, such a pretty girl?' 
 
 Mrs. Holman smiled at him. 'You are like 
 all men, you see only from your own point of view. 
 She is a pretty girl; she is even beautiful, and men 
 like beauty. They look on pretty girls as birds 
 look on ripe peaches as made for the eating. You 
 grudge a sweet lost to mankind; what of the peach ?'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY in 
 
 'Are not all peaches for the eating if they have 
 such a ripeness? I picked a peach once; I think 
 the peach has not been sorry.' He touched her 
 hair. 
 
 'Sit down/ she said, 'and listen. You think all 
 women are alike. They are not. You think all 
 women made for men.' 
 
 'As men for women.' 
 
 'They are not. You think we have no meaning 
 in ourselves ?' 
 
 'What meaning should either have alone?' 
 
 She looked out through the porthole; on the 
 sea there lay a tenderness come from the dying 
 day. The long swell rose and fell unbroken. 
 'Would you have all the world the same?' she 
 asked; 'all men and women made to marry? To 
 the eternal question is there one only answer ? Is 
 life then such a dull machine-made thing?' 
 
 'Has it proved dull?' he asked. 
 
 'You know,' she answered, 'what marriage has 
 meant to us.' She laughed into his face. 'But 
 do you think it is the same for all ? Would you 
 make it a matter of course, and so vulgarise and 
 ruin it ? Love is a passion and a gift from heaven, 
 a special gift.' 
 
 'Not like the rain, that falls upon the unjust and 
 the just alike ?' he asked.
 
 H2 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Can you believe it? No.' 
 
 'Then it is hard,' he said, 'for those left out.' 
 
 'It is not hard. They too may have their sacred 
 fire if they know how to draw it from the heavens. 
 They too may have their happiness. Never believe 
 that only marriage has that answer. You never 
 think so of men. You know that many men are 
 not born to be married. Why should you then 
 think so of women ?' 
 
 'Man has his work and his companions. He 
 has a meaning even though not married.' 
 
 'And have not we?' she answered. 'Is there 
 no place in the world for woman except with man ? 
 Have we no meaning ? Never believe it, Harry. 
 You hurt me when you say or think I married you 
 because I had to, because I ought to, driven by a 
 necessity, and that God made me so poor a thing 
 that I could not live alone nor find a meaning in 
 my womanhood. I married you because I loved 
 you/ 
 
 'May not Amitie love?' 
 
 'If she is made to love, she will not be a nun. 
 But if she love not, then it were better to be a nun 
 or any thing in which she may find herself, save 
 her own soul, than lose herself in marriage. The 
 only sanction and excuse for marriage is that love 
 demands it and will not take denial. Marriage in
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 113 
 
 itself, the tying of two bodies and two souls without 
 the heat of love to weld them into one, is a terrible 
 thing. It is not marriage that gives happiness, 
 companionship, children who will inherit the world, 
 but love. The children born of loveless marriages 
 what are they worth ? It is the fire in us that makes 
 the fire in them. And what companionship can 
 there be ? Are there not the Grahams to show us 
 that marriage may be a fetter and create a sore?' 
 
 'They loved each other once,' he said. 
 
 'They never did,' she said; 'not in the only way, 
 or they would never be what they are now, an open 
 discord. It wounds me in my heart. Marriage is 
 not a thing to draggle in the dirt. They live together, 
 they are tied together, they were never married.' 
 
 'And the girl?' he asked. 
 
 'Leave her alone. If love comes to her, then 
 well, but let her be certain first that it is love. 
 Leave her to choose alternatives, so that she be 
 not forced by loneliness into some marriage that 
 is no marriage. Never believe she cannot fulfil 
 herself in other ways, that the world has no use 
 for a woman, that she has no soul but what man 
 gives her.' 
 
 Her eyes were dim. The sun had set and the 
 waves dark. Then suddenly there came an after- 
 glow that filled the world again with glory.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A DULL and turbid sea with little restless waves 
 that tossed uncertainly; and rising apparently 
 straight from out the water the tops of ugly houses, 
 featureless and new, such is the first sight of Port 
 Said. 
 
 The sea is shallow, the Nile mouths on the south 
 empty out sand and mud that turn the blue Mediter- 
 ranean waters brown. There is no coast apparent. 
 The desert lies so low it does not show, and a mirage 
 shimmers over it that makes one think there must 
 be water underneath. The houses of Port Said, 
 the masts and funnels of the ships, might be upon a 
 raft afloat upon a muddy ocean far from land, so 
 little appearance is there of a harbour. There are 
 no trees rising against the sky-line, there is no green- 
 ness anywhere suggesting earth and all it bears. 
 Not until the ship gets nearer, and we see the light- 
 house and breakwater, do we realise that there is 
 land. 
 
 Yet in this muddy sea are many ships coming 
 and going, converging to this one point, or coming 
 
 114
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 115 
 
 thence. The solitude of the great sea plains is 
 gone. This is a water highway, and the mud might 
 be churned up by those that pass, sea dust from the 
 sea roadbed. 
 
 A nearer view does not mend matters. The 
 houses are so mean, such packing-cases of gaudy 
 colours, with gaudy names and signs upon them, 
 thrown anyhow upon a sand bank. The harbour 
 is so dirty. Even the statue of Lesseps in these 
 surroundings has no dignity. Set in the middle 
 of the desert, beside the waterway he made, it were 
 a different thing. But at the entrance the Canal is 
 not seen, nor realised, only the bareness, ugliness, 
 and meanness of all the port. And yet Port Said 
 is one of the great places of the world. It is the 
 meeting-place of East and West, of North and 
 South. It stands between three continents, three 
 epochs. It has the keys of peace and war. For 
 it, perhaps, and near it, will be fought a new decisive 
 battle of the world. 
 
 They stood in a little group upon the forecastle 
 and watched Port Said rise. To none of them was 
 it new except to Miss Ormond, and it filled her with 
 keen disappointment. 
 
 'This is Port Said ?' she asked. 
 
 'This is Port Said,' answered the Professor. 
 
 'I thought- , I thought- ,' she said.
 
 ii6 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'You thought it would look beautiful?' asked 
 Holt. 
 
 'I thought it would look dignified at least,' she 
 said. 
 
 The Professor shook his head. 'That is the 
 quality that this age most lacks. It has no dignity, 
 the age, the people, or the things they do. As to 
 Port Said, when I remember how I saw it first, and 
 what has happened since, I seem to see above it, 
 written in the air, "So passes all the glory of the 
 world.'" 
 
 ' What did you see at Port Said ? ' asked Holman. 
 
 4 1 was here when it was opened by the Empress 
 of the French. I saw the show, the magnificence; 
 I heard the noble speeches, all the hopes and pride. 
 I saw Lesseps, who seemed himself a prince among 
 the princes. Now 
 
 { They all are dead,' said Mrs. Holman, ' but 
 one, and she no longer Empress.' 
 
 'To be dead. That does not matter. All will 
 die. It is not death that takes away the glory of the 
 world. Death consecrates it. Had they died that 
 day their memories would have lived far longer and 
 far otherwise from the way they do. What did 
 they stand for in 1867 ? "Empress" meant beauty, 
 pride, success, and glory; the greatest woman in the 
 Western world, the dream of a romance. So would
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 117 
 
 she have remained. "Lesseps" spelt courage, 
 genius, and untiring effort, crowned by achieve- 
 ment, integrity, and honour. He was the greatest 
 engineer the world had seen. 
 
 'What do their names spell now? Hers brings 
 before us war, defeat, disaster, ruin, flight. We 
 never shall remember her apart from 1870. 
 
 'And Panama is written on Lesseps. Suez is 
 all forgotten. And where is Ismail ? Hie transit 
 gloria mundiy but the failures live.' 
 
 'There was another,' said Holman, 'who was 
 great then, who rose to greater greatness afterwards, 
 and who fell and died soured and embittered and 
 undignified though not disgraced.' 
 
 'You mean Bismarck,' said the Professor, and 
 was silent. 
 
 'We too,' said Holman thoughtfully, 'have not 
 done better. Our two greatest statesmen of that 
 time each ruined his party, and died out of power 
 and discredited. For ability and achievement our 
 century is perhaps as great as any, but we have 
 forgotten what dignity is like. We have forgotten 
 the way to live.' 
 
 'We have forgotten what human nature is/ said 
 the Professor. 'We have forgotten that it is not 
 what we have, but what we are that matters and 
 that lasts. We make a science of the body, and
 
 ii8 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 forget we all have souls which are immortal. We 
 seek for the applause of crowds and do not gain it, 
 yet to them sacrifice our self-respect. No place 
 presents this as Port Said does, because she is all 
 ours, of our own time.' 
 
 They came into the harbour and made fast. 
 Beside her and in front were three great English 
 liners, full of passengers. Small boats came off 
 and clustered at their ladders, the decks were in- 
 vaded by pedlars, conjurers, guides, touts, paper- 
 sellers. The peace of the high seas was gone. 
 
 They went below to breakfast. When they 
 returned on deck, ready to go ashore, they saw an 
 interesting sight. 
 
 A great three-funnelled ship was passing. She 
 had come up behind them. Before they entered 
 they had seen her smoke on the horizon, and that 
 she was a big steamer coming fast and gaining on 
 them. Now she was arrived they saw she was a 
 Russian, one of the Volunteer Fleet intended to 
 be half merchantman, half cruiser. On this oc- 
 casion she was wholly transport, for her decks were 
 dense with troops going to Port Arthur. They 
 looked strange men, older than troops of other 
 nations, bearded, with grey coats and fur caps. 
 
 The steamer went by slowly to her berth further 
 up the harbour, passing the English liners one by
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 119 
 
 one. Their passengers looked on her silently, 
 she was almost an enemy. For then was the time 
 of trouble about Egypt, when France and England 
 were on doubtful terms, and France was Russia's 
 ally. There were rumours in the air of war impend- 
 ing, of combinations against England, of threats, 
 of preparations to displace her. The ship went on 
 and moored on the other side. The basin of the 
 men-of-war was near her berth, and in the basin 
 there was a French torpedo-boat. Its crew was on 
 the deck, and when the Russian steamer came up 
 to her mooring they cheered her. The Russians 
 answered. For some minutes there was an inter- 
 change of cheer and cheer, welcome to welcome. 
 A friend had met a friend, and in hard times a friend 
 is doubly so. Then the cheer died and silence came. 
 But not for long. Behind the Russian cruiser, 
 at a few minutes' distance, came another ship, a 
 smaller, greyer, grimmer vessel. She was an Eng- 
 lish cruiser, and she flew the great white flag of 
 England. Suddenly from the liners came a storm 
 of cheers. It was their answer to the French and 
 Russian. The man-of-war passed on. Her crew 
 stood still upon her decks in discipline. She dipped 
 her ensign in courtly acknowledgment and that was 
 all. England suffices to herself as long as she is 
 true to that within her which made her what she is.
 
 120 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 On the Marchesa not a word was spoken. Each 
 nationality had its thought, no doubt, but all kept 
 silence. Port Said harbour returned to its ordinary 
 commonplaceness, and the Marcbesas passengers 
 went on shore.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THEY were sitting in the long verandah of the 
 hotel that gives upon the street, and watched the 
 motley throng go by. Truly nowhere in the world 
 are there so many different types in such a narrow 
 area. Almost all nations of the world would seem 
 to provide a sample. There are Western Europeans, 
 bankers or merchants, passengers from the ships; 
 there are Italians, Greeks, and Levantines. Their 
 face and speech differentiates them, though their 
 dress is all the same. There are Turks and Egyp- 
 tians with red fezzes, Arabs with stately march, 
 negroes with coal-black skins. A Parsee with his 
 hat told of the East, a Chinaman of the yet further 
 Orient, and all set out upon the background of the 
 fellahin's brown faces and their figures clad in ragged 
 clothes, of donkey-men, of hackney carriages with 
 half-starved horses, of clouds of dust and blinding 
 sunlight. The crowd is not a beautiful one; it has 
 neither colour, strength, nor purpose, but it is inter- 
 esting because so varied. At one end of the verandah 
 a conjurer was doing tricks. He brought chickens
 
 122 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 from eggs, birds from his palms ; he grew trees from 
 seed and made them fruit. There, seated on his 
 rug in the bare verandah, with no apparatus and no 
 stage, no help from hidden assistant, his skill an- 
 nounced a supernatural quality. No one could do 
 these things without some hidden power that the 
 West knew not of. His brown keen face and pierc- 
 ing eyes seemed to affect the judgment. 
 
 'How does he do it?' asked Othello. 
 
 'By quickness of his hand, and by leading your 
 eyes to look away at something else,' answered the 
 little Princess. 
 
 'And that is all?' he said, with disappointment. 
 
 'That is all,' she said. 'It is a clever play, but 
 I have seen it a hundred times in India.' 
 
 'There is no magic? nothing supernatural, no 
 special power ? I thought the East had secrets that 
 we did not know.' 
 
 The little Princess laughed. 'That is your 
 Western way of thinking. You always wish to see 
 some mystery in everything. I saw a conjurer 
 once in England, an Indian from Madras, who did 
 some of our well-known tricks, the mango tree, 
 the disappearing boy, and others, all clever tricks, 
 but nothing more. Yet the conjurer told them it 
 was all magic. He spoke of odic force, of trans- 
 mutation, of mystic influences, I know not what.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 123 
 
 He was a clever man and knew how to interest 
 the West. Had he said they were conjuring tricks 
 he would have made no money. I caught his eye 
 once and he laughed.' 
 
 'Was he not afraid you would betray him ?' asked 
 Othello. 
 
 'No, he was not afraid. He knew no one would 
 have believed me. You want to believe in magic 
 and you will do so. It is an European weakness. 
 Even you yourself do not believe me when I say that 
 it is only quickness.' 
 
 Othello almost blushed. 'But you have fortune- 
 tellers in the East/ 
 
 'Clever men/ she answered, 'who learn up things 
 beforehand, and who are very quick at guessing 
 from your face and manner/ 
 
 'And you all know that it is only guessing?' 
 
 'The village people, like simple people every- 
 where/ she answered, 'are bewildered, and will 
 believe anything, but the educated people are dif- 
 ferent. With you, however, it is often the most 
 educated who are most given to magic/ 
 
 'You take/ he said, 'all the romance from life. 
 You make it commonplace and dull. It is so with 
 us now, but I hoped in India it was different/ 
 
 The little Princess looked at him. 'Romance, 
 romance, what does it mean ? There are forces/
 
 i2 4 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 she said, 'that no one knows of; there are mys- 
 teries that no one has ever solved nor will do. There 
 is the power of the will upon the body, of one will 
 on others; there is sometimes a power to catch 
 from the future a reflection of what is within there. 
 But we do not seek to prove these mysteries by 
 changing eggs to chickens. We do not make re- 
 ligions out of conjuring tricks and marvels. That is 
 your way, not ours/ 
 
 To her it seemed an extraordinary thing that 
 people of a great civilisation like the West should 
 not find in it satisfaction. The knowledge and 
 capacity of Europe filled her with awe and wonder. 
 It was an enchanted palace full of genii. They 
 called in spirits who obeyed their call. They tamed 
 the land, the seas, the winds, the lightning. What 
 was there that they did not know and could not 
 do ? Yet they were fools. Their spirits were 
 material ones, and they had sold their souls. But 
 
 we With sudden energy she stopped her 
 
 unconscious thoughts and looked about her. Who 
 were the 'we' and 'they' ? She had lived so long 
 in Europe that she had grown into it, had come to 
 feel it the country of her adoption and its peoples 
 hers. The East she had forgotten. Thinking of 
 it she had despised it, poor, and weak, and ignorant. 
 Her skin might be an Eastern skin, her heart was all
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 125 
 
 of Europe. Yesterday only the West to her was 
 'home,' its peoples 'we'; the East was foreign. 
 And now, suddenly, she found that she was identify- 
 ing herself with the East she so despised. Even the 
 fellahin, the Arabs, were nearer her than Hamlet 
 or Othello. She felt at home with them and here; 
 she loved the sun, even the dust, and the people 
 of Europe were become 'they.' Between her and 
 her courtiers, Hamlet and Othello, had suddenly 
 appeared a gulf. It frightened her. She wondered 
 if they too saw it; if they were classing her with 
 the backward East and not the pushing West. 
 Suddenly she became silent. And then, as if seek- 
 ing refuge from the East that called, she went and 
 took a seat beside Miss Ormond. Would she not 
 give a helping hand back over the gulf to her own 
 side ? If the East beckoned she would shut her eyes. 
 'Save me,' she almost cried, 'oh save me from my- 
 self.' The two girls talked. Othello walked away 
 disconsolate. 
 
 A band played every now and then, pedlars came 
 in and tried to sell their wares; there was a con- 
 stant ebb and flow. Passengers from the ships, 
 followed by men with baskets carrying their pur- 
 chases, came and drank coffee. What does Port 
 Said produce from out her sand ? Nothing. What 
 does she sell ? Nougat made in France, Turkish
 
 i 2 6 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 delight from Paris, cigarettes of Syrian tobacco, 
 dates from the Delta in big luscious bunches. Port 
 Said has nothing and is nothing. 
 
 'And yet,' said Mrs. Holman, 'there is no place 
 like this. The band is bad, but I remember this is 
 the last that I shall hear till I return again. There- 
 fore the music has a meaning, and I listen to it. To 
 those who go East, this is the last of Europe and the 
 first of Asia. To those who go West, this is the last 
 of Asia and the first of Europe. We change here our 
 skies, our clothes, our minds, and put on new ones.' 
 
 'And,' said Warden, 'the strange thing is, that 
 directly we have changed, it seems as if we had 
 never been otherwise than we are. After Port 
 Said the East becomes the present; Europe has 
 become a misty memory, almost unreal. Does it 
 in truth exist ? The East takes us, and we renew 
 our Eastern habits as if there had never been a 
 break. Just so in coming back. Once in the 
 Mediterranean the East has gone from round us and 
 within us. It seems a dream-life we lived there. 
 The three or four or more years we have been away 
 from Europe counts as nothing, and we continue our 
 European life as if we had never been away.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Mrs. Holman, 'and we are vexed 
 and surprised to find our friends are grown away 
 from us, that Europe has not stood still as we have.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 127 
 
 'That is the trouble,' said Holt. 'We live nomad 
 lives. We have no home, no friends, no grip on 
 anything.' 
 
 'No friends?' asked the girl. 
 
 'No friends. At first we make many friends. 
 We lose them. They leave the station or we do. 
 We make more friends in place of them. They 
 pass. We go to England and make friends there; 
 we return to the East and they are forgotten and 
 forget us. Then at last we cease to make more 
 friends. We are afraid.' 
 
 'To make a friend,' said Mrs. Holman, 'is to 
 give a little of your heart. You cannot go on giving.' 
 
 'Therefore you shut yourself within a shell,' 
 said Holt, 'and rarely make new friends. Warden 
 is the lucky man. He has his regiment/ 
 
 'Yet that too changes. Men come and go.* 
 
 'And so at last,' said Mrs. Holman, laughing, 
 'you must marry out of self-defence. You give 
 the tattered remnant to a woman to keep for you, 
 taking in exchange a fresh new heart, unbattered.' 
 
 The men all laughed. 
 
 'Is that why Holman looks so young?' asked 
 Warden. 
 
 'That is the reason.' 
 
 'That is all wrong,' said Holman. 'Women take 
 and do not give.'
 
 128 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'What shall we do?' said Mrs. Holman. 'We 
 cannot go on board yet, for the coaling is not finished, 
 yet we have exhausted all the resources of Port 
 Said. We cannot buy more nougat or cigarettes; 
 we cannot ride on donkeys/ 
 
 'We can go off to the cruiser,' said Warden. 
 'I want to go, for I think I have a cousin in her. 
 Shall we all go ?' 
 
 They walked down through the dusty street 
 and took a boat off to the cruiser. Warden's cousin 
 was there, and welcomed them and showed them 
 over the great ship. Then in the twilight they took 
 a boat again and rowed back to the Marchesa. 
 
 They dined in the saloon. When they came up 
 on deck again they were in the Canal. 
 
 The West had gone, had faded. All things 
 are taken from us and become portions and parcels 
 of the dreadful past. They were coming into a 
 world where all was different, seas, and skies, and 
 skin, and clothes, all things were different save 
 our souls. For to the soul there is no East, no 
 West, no North, no South; for the souls of all are 
 part of the World-Soul that lives for ever.
 
 BOOK II 
 THE EAST
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE ship passed very slowly through the narrow 
 water. Before her it stretched a ghastly greenish 
 strip lit by her searchlight. The buoys that marked 
 the deeper water swam suddenly into being when 
 the light touched them, and disappeared behind 
 her into the night. On either side there was a wave 
 that followed the ship, washing against the banks 
 with a dull murmur, and beyond the banks the desert. 
 
 It seemed to stretch into illimitable distances, 
 mysterious, wonderful in the dim light of a half 
 moon. Strange noises came from it; a jackal 
 barked with mournful cadence, a camel bubbled. 
 And there were sounds born of the night alone, 
 whispers and sighs that drifted up on the night 
 wind. It seemed as if they were the desert's 
 thoughts that passed, her dreams, her fancies, 
 her remembrances. They were the ghosts of all 
 the things that she had seen through all the ages. 
 
 In the silence the girl sat alone, and thoughts 
 came to her out of the night. 
 
 The woman and the man are different. 
 
 131
 
 i 3 2 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 She had never realised it before in all its fulness; 
 it had not come to her as a certainty, as a thing 
 she knew. For all the life she had lived had tended 
 to obliterate the difference, or rather, to spread 
 over life a crust through which the truth could 
 not show. It had seemed to her, it had been told 
 to her as a new school of thought, that there was 
 indeed no difference that was real. It was all 
 artificial. If women did not do some things so 
 well as men that was because they had not had 
 the opportunity, had never been taught to do them, 
 had been oppressed by man and kept below for 
 his own ends. Given a fair field there was noth- 
 ing she could not do as well as he could, maybe 
 better. And in the life she had lived, it seemed 
 to her that it might be true. In most walks of 
 life that she knew there were women who had dis- 
 tinguished themselves. There had been women 
 wranglers, doctors, lawyers, scientists, managers 
 of business. That the women were very few, the 
 exception that proved the opposite rule, and the 
 men many was nothing. Time and education 
 would put that right. Women were men's rivals, 
 and they would be successful rivals. There was 
 not really any difference. Physically even, women 
 could rival men. Men were only the oppressors, 
 the enemies, who arrogated to themselves powers
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 133 
 
 they had not got, and had through all ages kept 
 women down. Well, that time was past or was 
 quickly passing. 
 
 Women were emancipating themselves. They 
 were throwing away their chains and opening their 
 prisons, coming into the fresh air. Men were un- 
 necessary, useless, wicked, and their day was past. 
 She had heard and read beautiful prophecies of 
 what the world was to be when women had the 
 guidance of everything, when they had perhaps 
 reduced men to the position women used to hold. 
 Then would be the millennium, the Victory of 
 Women. 
 
 And now suddenly from the sight of the cruiser, 
 of the Russian transport, of the French gunboat, 
 from the understanding of the passions that lay 
 below the surface, a new light came to her. The 
 whole futility of the ideas that she had heard came 
 flooding into her mind. Men and women were 
 different, utterly different. She could not imagine, 
 could not think of a woman's crew on board that 
 cruiser, or of that crew of men obeying a woman's 
 government. 
 
 It was true she had seen warships often before, 
 she had even been on board them, she had known 
 sailors. She had known many soldiers too, and 
 seen troops upon parade. But then they had
 
 i 3 4 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 brought to her no thoughts. She had seen, 
 admired, and then forgotten. In private life it 
 did not seem that soldiers or sailors were any dif- 
 ferent from other men, and therefore no different 
 from women. 
 
 But to-day the whole absurdity dawned upon 
 her. The visit to the cruiser, the sight of her guns, 
 her men, their discipline, the purpose in their faces 
 and their manner, had come to her like a revela- 
 tion. These men were men, and no woman could 
 ever be like them, could hope to be, could wish to 
 be. The foundation of her dream had disap- 
 peared. The whole fabric of the world rested on 
 force, and force is man. And she knew that she 
 admired it, loved it, and that it was necessary to 
 purify the world. Yet because her dream had 
 gone an anger took her, and she went to the ex- 
 treme. Then the old truth was true. The world 
 was men's, and they were the lords of it. Women 
 were but their slaves. A bitter resentment seized 
 her because she was not a man. Why was she 
 born a woman and a slave ? 
 
 She sat and stared into the night. 
 
 A man sat close beside her. 'It is a wonderful 
 night,' he said, and she knew that it was Holt. 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 'What are you thinking of?' he said. 'The
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 135 
 
 desert makes one think. It has no boundaries. It 
 lets thoughts go out into the world.' 
 
 'Only into the dark,' she answered. 
 
 'What are you thinking of?' he said again. 
 
 'I am thinking how unfairly the world is made/ 
 she answered. 
 
 'Truly,' he said, 'it seems so. But in what 
 way ? ' 
 
 For a time she did not answer. Then suddenly 
 she asked, 'Have you ever wished you were a 
 woman ?' 
 
 He was surprised. 'A woman? No/ 
 
 'Of course you would not. No man would. 
 Why should they wish it?' There was a bitterness 
 in her voice. 'But many women wish they had 
 been men.' 
 
 'Do they?' he asked, surprised. 'Why should 
 they wish it ? ' 
 
 'Cannot you guess ?' 
 
 'I cannot indeed,' he answered. 'It is true I 
 have heard women say it before, some women. 
 But I supposed they did not mean it, or that it 
 was only because they were angry with some man.' 
 
 'Yes,' she answered, 'that is the sort of thing a 
 man would think. But supposing it is true. Sup- 
 pose you had been a woman, think how you would 
 feel/
 
 136 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'I think,' he answered, 'if I had been born a 
 woman I should have been contented.' 
 
 'I am sure you would not.' 
 
 'No one, of course, can tell what he would do 
 in an impossible case; but why not?' 
 
 'It is so much better to be a man.' 
 
 'That is no answer, even if it were true. It is 
 better, probably, to be a king, or very rich or fa- 
 mous. I am not any of these things. But I am 
 content to be myself. I do not lie awake at 
 nights wishing to be a millionaire. And I do 
 not know that it is true. Why is it better to be a 
 man ?' 
 
 ' Because you are free and we are not.' 
 
 'I do not see it.' 
 
 'Because you won't.' 
 
 'Indeed,' he said sincerely, 'it is not because I 
 won't, but because I can't. I have not, however, 
 thought about it very much.' 
 
 'You had no need;' and the anger in her voice 
 increased. It seemed to him that the anger was 
 twofold at herself and at him, because he was 
 and she was not a man. It kindled in him a faint 
 amusement, but he would not let it be seen. And 
 he felt sorry for her, because it is no good being 
 vexed with Fate. 
 
 'I daresay I am stupid,' he answered quietly.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 137 
 
 'Believe me it is not anything else. Will you not 
 explain to me ?' 
 
 'Because you are free and we not. You are 
 masters of your destiny, but we are dependent on 
 Fate and you. We can do nothing without you. 
 We are so helpless.' 
 
 'I think,' he answered, 'that you exaggerate our 
 power. No man is master of himself nor of his 
 destiny, no one. I think you observe only a part 
 of man's life and not the whole, only the rewards, 
 not the hard work, the discipline, that leads to the 
 rewards, nor the punishments of failures. I do not 
 think that men are more free than women, it is 
 only an appearance. We are dependent on other 
 men; we have to go through a discipline you have 
 no idea of. You are always shielded from the 
 world's knocks by men, therefore you do not realise 
 them. We have to take them all through life. 
 When they come through us and touch you, you 
 blame us, as if we caused them. What man is in- 
 dependent ? The great majority of mankind are 
 employed in some way or another. They are 
 dependent on their employer. A manufacturer is 
 dependent on his workmen and on the public. A 
 soldier or sailor is dependent absolutely on his 
 commanding officer and on Government. An artist 
 is dependent on a very fickle public taste, all are
 
 138 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 dependent on Fate. When you say that men are 
 free to make their own lives, you are wrong. They 
 are dependent just as you are. It is a different 
 dependence, that is all/ 
 
 'But you are not dependent on women/ 
 
 'Not for our livelihood, true, but for everything 
 else/ 
 
 'And you earn it/ 
 
 'Do not women earn it from their fathers and 
 their husbands ? Do they do nothing to deserve 
 it ? Is it worse to take it from a man who loves 
 you, or wring it from a reluctant world as he does ?' 
 
 She bit her lip. She had not expected this. It 
 made her more angry. 
 
 'Besides, you exaggerate the rewards. It is 
 women who set great value on money and 
 honour, not men. Men make the money, women 
 spend it. Men earn the honours, women enjoy 
 them. The value men set on these things is only 
 that they may give them to the women. Thus 
 men and women are different, complementary to 
 each other. That which one gains the other takes. 
 Women give care, affection, children, in full value 
 for all they get/ 
 
 'It is easy,' said the girl scornfully, 'to depre- 
 ciate what you have got/ 
 
 'You do not think I am sincere?'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 139 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Yet it is true. And as to power, it seems to 
 me that if men have power over the natural world, 
 women have power over men, and through them 
 over everything. Nearly all the married men I 
 know are greatly governed by their wives. In India 
 the wives go to the hills, go home, but the man 
 stays and works in the heat alone. Often when 
 men would retire they cannot. They must make 
 more money, or get some honour for their wives. 
 So they work on, and die often enough/ 
 
 'You think them fools because they are married ?' 
 
 'They tell me I am the fool, that they are glad 
 to do it, and that marriage makes everything worth 
 while/ 
 
 'You don't believe them ?' 
 
 'I suppose, like other people, I only realise what 
 I know/ 
 
 'Besides,' he continued presently, 'it is not true 
 that men make the world according to their own 
 ideals for themselves to be happy in. Nothing 
 could be less true. 
 
 'The world is formed and governed by men, 
 but mainly on women's ideals. They try always 
 to make it a place more and more fit not for the 
 strong, who are men, but for the weak, who are 
 women. All great machinery to keep the world
 
 I 4 o ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 quiet and at peace is erected at woman's bidding 
 for woman's use. Men would prefer less law, less 
 peace, more scope for strength and ability, and 
 energy and courage. It is women and priests, 
 their allies, who cry always for that peace that is to 
 put all on to the same level, to elevate the coward, 
 the weakling, the fool to the level of the hero. 
 
 'A man's world would be a different place. If 
 he wanted a thing he would be free to try and take 
 it.' 
 
 'Yes, or a woman. He would take her?' 
 'He would not take her were she unwilling.' 
 'I would sooner be taken than bought,' she an- 
 swered. 'I would respect a man who carried me 
 away, but not a man I had to marry to live. And 
 I should think you would like it better too.' 
 
 'Then,' said Holt, 'give the world back to us. 
 It was a better world when there was less peace 
 and talk in it. It was a happier world also for 
 both. And it is not our doing.' 
 
 'If I were a man,' she said, 'I would not let 
 myself be governed by women/
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 FAR ahead, low down upon the desert, shone a 
 star. It grew and it came nearer till it was seen 
 to be the light under the bows of an approaching 
 steamer. The Marchesa went into a 'gare* and 
 tied up, waiting for it to pass. Slowly it came 
 up, and almost touched her side as it went past. 
 It was all dark on board, and about this stranger 
 passing them so near and yet half seen there 
 seemed a mystery. Out of the night she came, 
 and went again into the night. 
 
 Then the Marchesa went on again. 
 
 The man and girl sat side by side and stared 
 into the desert. They could not see each other, and 
 there had risen between them an antagonism that 
 half drew them to each other and half divided them. 
 
 The girl had ceased to argue, ceased to think. 
 Only there was in her a bitterness, a sense of weak- 
 ness and of loneliness that grew. 
 
 The world was man's, and woman could gain 
 it only from a man. That was the bitterness. 
 She could not stand alone. Was there never in 
 
 141
 
 H2 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 the world a place for woman only ? In all these 
 stars that shone above her was there none for 
 women ? A mute rebellion seized her, all the 
 more fierce because of its uselessness. The tears 
 came to her eyes; she felt a sob was rising to her 
 throat. The man heard a rustle, and he was 
 alone. He did not follow her. Why should he 
 follow ? He felt sore. What had men done, 
 what had he done that she should so contemn 
 him and envy him at once ? Had men the better 
 part of life ? 
 
 A week ago he would have said 'Yes' unthink- 
 ingly. He did not want to be a woman. He did 
 not wish to be other than he was, and make the 
 best of himself and of the world. Was not the 
 world man's oyster ? Could not his hand and brain 
 get for him all he wanted ? A week ago he would 
 have answered 'Yes.' And now? 
 
 What was it that he wanted ? What was the 
 desire that filled his life ? that had come uncon- 
 sciously, unbidden ? Was it anything that he could 
 win with hand or brain ? Was it money ? Was it 
 even fame or honour ? None of these things. Was 
 it woman, even ? He paused. Women can be 
 bought sometimes, or won, or carried off. Was it a 
 woman ? No ! 
 
 What then ?
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 143 
 
 It was a woman's love, and that cannot be earned, 
 nor forced, nor gained. It has no price. It can be 
 given only. Yet that was all the world was worth. 
 She envied him because, a man, he had the world 
 at his feet. She did not understand what was the 
 real value of life, what was that for which if a man 
 offered all the substance of his house it would be 
 utterly despised. It was the love of a woman. 
 And that she only could give to man. Man inde- 
 pendent of woman ? Was there ever such a folly ? 
 If she was dependent on him, he was so on her 
 and more, and more. What was her loneliness to 
 his? 
 
 His bitterness had passed. It broke like a 
 barrier, and a flood of love and pity filled his 
 heart. He looked to see if he could see her. He 
 rose and walked about the decks; but she was 
 gone. The voices of men talking on the farther 
 side jarred upon him, and he returned to where 
 he had been. 
 
 'What is the matter with my young man Selim 
 that he sits alone and stares across the desert?' 
 asked the Sultan. 
 
 The Vizier answered. 
 
 'He hath a mystery in his head and in his heart 
 a flame, for it seems he is in love.'
 
 i 44 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 The girl went down towards her cabin. She 
 was tired, almost afraid. The dry, hot air from 
 off the sand strained on her nerves and bound her 
 forehead in a band of iron. The illimitable dis- 
 tances seemed to call to her. She felt as if her 
 soul might go abroad to join the night which called 
 to her. She wanted quiet and four walls to shut 
 her in, that she might return within herself. 
 
 But in the corridor she met Sister Teresa. The 
 nun would have passed her by, had half done so, 
 then stopped and took her hand. 
 
 'Your eyes look tired,' she said; 'you are not well.' 
 
 The girl murmured something, but did not move. 
 Instinctively she was glad to stay, to feel her hand 
 within Teresa's firm, cool grasp. 
 
 'Sister Cecilia, too, is ill,' went on the nun. 'But 
 then she is so delicate, and often ill. I fear this 
 voyage for her, and that it was wrong to bring her.' 
 She paused. 'Where are you going?' 
 
 'I was going to my cabin. I would like to come 
 with you instead. May I see Sister Cecilia ? Per- 
 haps I could do something for her put scent upon 
 her head, or something.' 
 
 Sister Teresa thought a moment. 'Yes, you 
 shall come,' she said; 'and you may bring your 
 scent. We poor Sisters do not have such things, 
 you know;' she smiled.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 145 
 
 They went together to the little cabin at the far 
 end of the saloon, which Sister Cecilia shared with 
 another Sister. A nun was reading aloud, but 
 stopped as they came in. 
 
 'I am so sorry,' said the girl, 'to find you thus.' 
 
 Cecilia shook her head and smiled. 'It is not 
 much; and then I am accustomed to be ill. I 
 often have been; therefore I do not mind it as you 
 strong people might.' 
 
 The girl sat down beside her and dropped some 
 eau-de-cologne upon her forehead. Sister Teresa 
 slipped quietly away, taking the other Sister with her. 
 
 'But to be ill so far from home, and going to a 
 strange country.' 
 
 'We take our homes within us, and there is no 
 country that God's eye cannot see, none nearer 
 Him nor farther. Do not be sorry for me. Do 
 you not see that I am happy ? ' 
 
 The girl saw. That was what drew her to the 
 nuns that they were happy. And yet Cecilia 
 looked so ill, so very ill. Her face was thin and 
 hot; it burned beneath the girl's cool fingers. A 
 sudden fear, a certainty took her, that the nun was 
 dying, and tears came to her eyes, but other tears 
 than those that came once before that night. 
 
 'You think,' said Cecilia, comprehending, 'that I 
 am very ill.' 
 
 L
 
 146 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 The girl shook her head, she could not trust her 
 words. 
 
 'I also think I am. The doctor says it is but 
 the change, a chill, a fever I don't know what. 
 But I feel as if it were more than that. I think, 
 perhaps, I shall never see the East, but shall go 
 straight home without that long detour.' 
 
 'It is a way of talking,' thought the girl, 'to call 
 death "going home"; it is an attempt to cover up 
 the fear/ 
 
 'It is a truth,' said the nun, divining. 'Some 
 make their homes on earth. They marry; they 
 have husbands, children. They lend their hearts 
 to this world. They make their treasures here. 
 They do as God has made them. God is love. 
 They climb to His great love by little steps, of 
 husband, children, country, the ever-widening 
 circles. We go to the Infinite in a step. So God 
 is very good to us. Therefore we call it "going 
 home." Are we not right ? For where the treasure 
 is, there will the heart be also.' 
 
 The utter quiet of her voice made music of the 
 words. They put a truth into them that alone 
 they could not hold. 
 
 'Tell me,' said the girl, 'what is the true way of 
 life ? Is yours the only true one ?' 
 
 'There is a proverb,' said the nun, 'that says all
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 147 
 
 roads lead to Rome. Each takes the road that 
 opens, and for her that is the only road. So all 
 loves lead to God. To take the love that comes 
 to you, that is given to you, is to take the only true 
 one.' 
 
 The girl was silent, thinking. The way to heaven 
 is through love alone. That was a new way of 
 putting it. To be a Sister and to renounce the 
 world was not to cut off love, but to attain a wider 
 one, to go at one step from the finite to the infinite. 
 That was its meaning. Then the lives of Sisters 
 had a meaning, not only to themselves, but to the 
 world. For they kept before it always the remem- 
 brance that there is another love to lose yourself in 
 besides marriage, and another immortality besides 
 that of children. 
 
 Cecilia coughed a painful, hacking cough that 
 tore and wounded. 
 
 'You should not talk,' the girl said; 'it makes 
 you cough. And I came here to help you and be 
 kind to you, and not to ask these things from you.' 
 
 'Then let me talk,' said the nun. 'You know 
 that from the abundance of the heart the mouth 
 speaketh; and to talk to you makes me realise it 
 all the more myself. It is like showing one's treas- 
 ure to some one that we love. You do not mind ?' 
 
 'I like to hear you talk,' she answered. 'You
 
 148 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 make all things seem different. To you religion 
 is a love, and that only. It has seemed to me a 
 fear sometimes. If you give up the world, it is 
 not that you love it less, or that you despise it, but 
 that you love something more ? I think I should 
 like to be a nun.' 
 
 Cecilia shook her head and smiled a queer little 
 protecting smile, as of a mother to a child who 
 asks to be grown up at once. And yet, if any- 
 thing, she was the younger of the two. The girl 
 saw and coloured. 
 
 'Why should I not?' she asked; 'and how should 
 I know ? ' 
 
 'Sister,' said Cecilia, 'no one becomes, or should 
 become, a nun because she wishes to, because she 
 thinks she would like to be so. That is not the 
 way. You do not understand. Consider. Should 
 a woman marry because she wishes to marry, be- 
 cause she thinks that in the abstract the married is 
 the better life, because she wants a home, because 
 she does not wish to be alone ? The only real 
 marriage is when love compels her; when a man 
 calls to her, and the call echoes in her heart, and 
 answers to him. Would you have her ask the man 
 to marry her and he indifferent ? Would that be 
 a marriage ? If not with man, how should it be with 
 God ? The real brides of Christ are those to whom
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 149 
 
 He calls and bids them come, and so they must; 
 they must. They do not think. They cannot think. 
 A fire devours them, and there is a mist within the 
 brain. If God wants you, so will He call you. And 
 if not, then He has other work for you to do and other 
 love to fill your heart. And do not think one love is 
 earthly and another heavenly. All love that makes 
 you lose yourself is God.' She laid her hot lips on 
 the girl's fresh ones. 'Do not think,' she whispered. 
 'Listen. If it is the mind that seeks, it is the heart 
 that finds. When God calls, you will hear it then. 
 He calls with many voices. The voice which says, 
 "Go to the sick and friendless, to the poor; help 
 them and love them," that is God's voice. The 
 voice that says, "Work hard; cultivate then the 
 talent that you have, for your work will help your 
 family, your nation, or humanity," that is God's 
 voice. And if a man says to you, "Come to me," 
 and you know that you must go, that is God's voice 
 also. You surely will hear it if you listen.' 
 'And if I listen, and I hear it, then ?' 
 'You will be happy. No matter what happens, 
 you will be happy. For you have God within 
 your heart as I have.' 
 
 The nun leant back exhausted. Her soul had come 
 up to her lips to speak, to give its message. And 
 now a weariness came to her, and she almost slept.
 
 150 ' ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Sister Teresa looked in softly. She came up to 
 the girl and laid her hand upon her. 'Come/ 
 she said, 'I think that now you both will sleep. 
 Her restlessness is gone and yours.' 
 
 The girl looked at her comprehendingly. 
 
 'How did you know?' she asked, when they 
 had come without the door. 'How did you know 
 I wanted her and she me ?' 
 
 'I did not know. I do not know now what she 
 has said to you nor you to her. I do not want to 
 know/ 
 
 'Why did you bring me, then ?' 
 
 But Sister Teresa only shook her head and smiled.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 'I THINK,' said Warden, 'that this Red Sea is 
 making us all fractious.' 
 
 He looked across the hard blue sea to the barren 
 hills which raised themselves in staring nakedness 
 into the burning air. They wore not the least sem- 
 blance of green garment anywhere no trees, no 
 grass, no bushes. Their flanks were red and yel- 
 low, and threw back the light in utter shamelessness; 
 even in their valleys there was not a sign of verdure, 
 only the mauve and lilac shadows that the desert 
 makes. It might have been a world burnt out of 
 clay, with molten china for a sea. And in that 
 furnace blew a wind hot, rough, and dry, that burned 
 the skin, and brought with it a fine dust to hurt the 
 eyes and lips. 
 
 'Holt has become a restless, moody, dull tramp,' 
 continued Warden. 'He moves about the deck 
 trying to find a place to be alone in. If you go near 
 him he glares at you and moves elsewhere.' 
 
 'Indeed?' asked Mrs. Holman. 
 
 'Yes, indeed, indeed. Do not we share a cabin? 
 
 'Si
 
 i 5 2 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 He glares at me, however, to such an extent when I 
 go in, that he has frightened me. I dress by stealth 
 now, and I go to bed in fear and trembling. How- 
 ever, he is not the only one. Othello and Hamlet 
 both are mad. They frown upon each other like 
 thunder-clouds. I think, for safety's sake, the 
 Captain should put them both in irons in the hold. 
 Then the Professor 
 
 ' Has it affected him as well ? He looks quite 
 happy writing there. He even laughs.' 
 
 'That's the worst sign of all. He laughs as the 
 hyaena does that licks its gory lips. He is scathing 
 some one with an article or a review, which he will 
 send home from Aden. He laughs ha, ha, in fiendish 
 glee at every envenomed bite. Your husband - 
 
 'What, Harry too? He is all right, the same 
 as usual.' 
 
 'You think so, do you? That shows how little 
 wives know really about their husbands. Had I 
 not intervened he would have utterly destroyed 
 Graham last night. I threw myself between them 
 at imminent peril to myself. If I escape from this 
 sea safe and sound I shall be surprised.' 
 
 'What was the quarrel ?' 
 
 'A mere nothing. Holt, the Professor, your hus- 
 band, and myself were sitting in the smoking-room; 
 we sat and smoked and drank, not, I must say, in
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 153 
 
 friendliness and pleasant intercourse, but in a strained 
 and violent sort of truce. Still it was a truce, and 
 occasionally some one made a remark, of some osten- 
 tatiously simple nature, just so that the silence should 
 not become too unbearable. Some one had just 
 said they wondered if there were any animals in 
 these hills, when Graham entered. He stared about 
 him, threw himself upon a seat, and answered 
 "Lions"; we all kept silence except your husband, 
 who rashly said, "Nothing but lions?" 
 
 "Nothing," said Graham fiercely; "what else 
 could live in such a place but lions?" 
 
 "But then," said Holman, "if there are lions, 
 there must be deer or camels or oxen for them to 
 eat." 
 
 * "How could there be ?" asked Graham. "What 
 could they eat ? Do deer eat sand ? do camels 
 browse on rocks ? can oxen chew a cud of gravel ? 
 There's nothing else." 
 
 'Your husband thought a little, then he said: 
 "If you come to that, what do the lions eat then, 
 if there are lions ?" 
 
 "They are carnivorous, they eat each other," 
 said Graham. 
 
 'It was then that I intervened, and rising to the 
 occasion I told your husband that you had sent 
 me to him, and I had forgotten to give the mes-
 
 i 5 4 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 sage, though it was urgent. I prayed him to lose 
 no time/ 
 
 'He didn't/ said Mrs. Holman. 'He seemed 
 surprised when I said it must be a mistake/ 
 
 'The Professor basely followed him, leaving 
 Holt and me to stand the fire. Then Graham let 
 us have it. He warned us bachelors against mar- 
 riage. He said it was a fraud, an awful do, a trap 
 with iron teeth, a dead-sea fruit. He was as full 
 of images as a cinematograph. 
 
 4 He said it was a scheme to get a man to work 
 that a woman might do nothing. He said that it 
 was a lottery all blanks with hardly ever a prize. 
 Before marriage men lived in comfort and in liberty. 
 If they had a house it was their own; with marriage 
 they surrendered it. She took the best room for 
 her drawing-room, and the man had to put up with 
 a tiny back room to sit and work and smoke in. 
 She took the best bedroom for herself, the next best 
 for her guests; he got .a little dressing-room. She 
 took his income, and allowed him at best to keep 
 a trifle for himself. The wife of the working man 
 drove him from his house, and then blamed him for 
 going to the bar, and tried to get the bars shut by 
 law. She ' 
 
 'You ought to have been ashamed to listen to 
 him/
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 155 
 
 'You cannot blame us/ answered Warden. 'Holt 
 and I are not married; we are inquirers, humble 
 learners of the mysteries. We hear so much of one 
 side of it from you and Holman, we naturally like 
 to hear the other/ 
 
 Mrs. Holman shook her head at him. 
 
 'And besides/ he continued, 'you are just as 
 bad. Did I not hear you women listening to Mrs. 
 Graham yesterday while she expounded to you the 
 villainies of man ?' 
 
 Mrs. Holman laughed. 'She gave us a lecture 
 on the suffrage/ 
 
 'Well. Is not that the same ? The suffrage ! 
 She wants to be a man and become well, I won't 
 say what. Heaven made her a woman, she wants 
 to pretend to be a man. You listened/ 
 
 'We could not get away/ 
 
 'You let Miss Ormond listen, that innocent young 
 girl/ 
 
 'She did not listen long. She went away with 
 the Professor/ 
 
 'Lucky Professor/ and Warden sighed. 
 
 There was a silence, then Mrs. Holman spoke 
 again. Her tone had changed. The badinage had 
 left it, and there was a seriousness. 
 
 'They must be dreadfully unhappy. When men 
 and women talk like that, and rail against the world
 
 156 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 and its necessities, it is because they are unhappy. 
 They have made failure, so they blame the world or 
 marriage, or their sex or men or women and not 
 themselves. They think and say marriage has 
 spoiled them, but it is that they have never known 
 what marriage is. Marriage is union and it is a 
 gift of God. They have thought that it is 
 an institution made by man. They have tried 
 their hands at it and failed. Either the man 
 or woman, or both, were never meant at all for 
 marriage, or it was for marriage with some one 
 else/ 
 
 Warden nodded. 'I think it is so. When soldiers 
 abuse the army it is that they are not fitted to be 
 soldiers. They have made a great mistake in en- 
 tering. It is so no doubt with other things.' 
 
 Holman had come. He heard what Warden said. 
 * Nothing can be more true/ he said; 'and that is 
 the root of the trouble with the Grahams. He was 
 an excellent soldier and devoted to his work, but she 
 made him leave the army/ 
 
 'Why?' 
 
 'She has some idea that soldiering is wrong, some 
 dream of universal peace which is only prevented 
 by armies and soldiers. She drove this into him 
 until he left. And he has never ceased regretting 
 it. He has nothing to do, and can do nothing. He
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 157 
 
 is a loafer and hates himself for being so, and she 
 despises him for the same reason.' 
 
 'Despising him, the man she thinks she knows 
 best/ said Warden, 'has led to despising all of us, 
 mankind, in fact, and she yearns to take over the 
 world from our mismanagement. Yet her failure 
 with the one man she has influence over might 
 have made her pause.' 
 
 'She does not think it is her fault, but his/ said 
 Holman. 
 
 'And do you think/ asked Warden of Mrs. Hol- 
 man, 'that it was his fault or hers ?' 
 
 'I think/ she answered, 'that it was both. A 
 man's work is part of him and he must choose it. 
 He is a fool if he lets his wife dictate ; she is a fool 
 to try. I would never think of interfering with 
 Harry's work, or of letting him interfere with my 
 management of the babies.' 
 
 'Did he ever try?' laughed Warden. 
 
 'He had better not/ she answered. 'There is 
 a man's side of life, and men know it; there is a 
 woman's side, and women know it. The wise 
 people are those who mind their own affairs in 
 marriage or out of it, and leave the other sex to 
 mind those which nature gave them. Why should 
 a man or woman marry but that each should bring 
 to the common stock that which the other lacks? 1
 
 158 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'What is the difference then between a man and 
 a woman?' asked Warden, greatly daring. 
 
 'They see the world from different standpoints/ 
 answered Mrs. Holman, 'and both are true. A 
 man and woman are as the two eyes that give per- 
 spective, roundness, and reality to the view. Neither 
 alone sees the world whole.' 
 
 'Which is the best ?' But all three of them began 
 to laugh. 
 
 Marriage is a union of man and woman into 
 one organism, but within that unit both remain 
 neither is lost, neither is robbed of one particle of 
 his value. Nay more, within the shelter of that 
 unit each gives the more his own peculiar qualities 
 necessary to the whole. So that if man forget he 
 is a man, or woman forget she is a woman, ruin is 
 threatened to the unit and to each component of 
 that unit. The Grahams each forgot that: she 
 invaded a province not hers, and he surrendered. 
 So in a nation there is the male and female. Each 
 has equal value to the whole, each contains its own 
 qualities and virtues. But if women forget that 
 they are women, always women, whether rich or 
 poor, wise or foolish, married or unmarried, seeing 
 life always from the woman's side, with women's 
 strength and women's weakness, and try to invade 
 men's duties; if men forget that they are men, and
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 159 
 
 that on their shoulders lies the duty of government, 
 then is chaos come. Women and men have lost 
 their value. 
 
 'Salt is good: but if the salt have lost its savour, 
 wherewith shall it be seasoned ?' 
 
 So, added to the heat, the dryness, and the glare, 
 this trouble between the Grahams made life more 
 difficult on the Marcbesa. The men liked Graham. 
 Taken by himself, without his wife, they found him 
 clever, humorous, and, beneath his brusqueness, 
 kind. Knowing him so, they blamed his wife for 
 all the quarrels, and they resented her continual 
 attacks upon their sex. The women liked Mrs. 
 Graham. They were sorry for her. They saw 
 her bitterness came from deep unhappiness, keen 
 disappointment, disillusion. They blamed the man. 
 And so there rose a sex division which grew. It 
 might indeed have threatened all their comfort 
 but for the Holmans. They always made for 
 peace. They laughed and kept their tempers. 
 They stifled all discussion and argument. They 
 took no sides. How could they ? Were not they 
 one ? How could they lean to either side ? The 
 right eye does not fight the left because it sees things 
 differently. The left hand does not hate the right 
 because its duties are not the same. That is what 
 gives each value, that the other is there to balance it.
 
 160 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Even the girl felt in herself the strain. It drove 
 her nearer to the nuns. It made their life seem 
 calmer, purer, happier for the ignoble strife of sex 
 about them. They were women, they were free. 
 Could she not be as they ?
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 SISTER CECILIA did not mend. The hot air 
 choked her, and she burned in a continual fever. 
 So the girl went often down to sit with her. She 
 heard the Sisters talk, she stayed and joined their 
 prayers, and there grew within her heart a new 
 conception of the faith which she thought hers, 
 but had never understood. Dead formulas that 
 had been only words surrounding nothing, rose 
 into a new life and meaning. Things that had 
 seemed far off came nearer and nearer, words of 
 two thousand years ago became thoughts of to-day, 
 and dreams hardened into reality. It was as if the 
 morning mists had taken form and substance; had 
 come to her as a real presence, speaking with human 
 voice, touching her with warm and living fingers. 
 
 She saw and knew that this faith was a woman's 
 faith. The earlier faith, that which came from 
 yonder burning Mount Sinai, was a man's faith. 
 It was full of strength, of hardness and revenge, 
 of blood and death; it was for men, and women 
 had no part in it. Even the sons, the immortality, 
 
 M 101
 
 162 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 belonged to the father and not the mother. Before 
 that faith women were nothing save an adjunct to 
 men. It was a great and beautiful faith, and is 
 still true. Every truth endures for ever, but it has 
 others added to it. This later faith stands on the 
 earlier, as woman does on man. And this faith of 
 Christ was woman's faith. How different was it 
 to the former! The old God spoke in thunder 
 from a mountain, but the new in a child's voice. 
 He was not man's God; man had no part in Him. 
 He had no earthly father. This God was born of 
 woman, and of woman only, to be a God of woman, 
 to tell of the pity and the compassion that is woman's, 
 to decry all that men hold in honour, to exalt the 
 virtues that women love in themselves. All this 
 mystery of the Virgin birth, which had been before 
 but a vague nothing, became a light to see by. It 
 was by woman that this truth came, and for woman, 
 because it was her own. 
 
 A great reverence and love rose in her for this 
 Mother of God, for her through whom God became 
 manifest, who alone had given Him to the world. 
 In the nun's cabin there was a large photograph 
 of Raphael's great picture, now in the Dresden 
 Gallery, and it seemed to the girl that this expressed 
 the secret of religion. It was the woman, not the 
 man, the Virgin with her child, Motherhood with-
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 163 
 
 out Fatherhood, that was the saving of the world. 
 Men were to kneel before it and adore it, as did the 
 Pope in the great picture. 
 
 If woman was second to man on earth in this 
 life, was weak and unregarded, it was because the 
 world was wicked, because it was man-made and 
 man-ruled. In Heaven it would be otherwise. 
 Heaven was a woman's Paradise. In Heaven there 
 is no marrying and no giving in marriage. 
 
 These thoughts brought to her a new peace, a 
 great comfort, a self-respect she feared that she 
 was losing. Who can respect herself if she thinks 
 her sex is inferior, created to be second to man, 
 whose only chance is to imitate and copy man ? 
 Who is there who while saying that they wish to 
 do so, and even do so, does not feel in herself the 
 foolishness, the uselessness ? Now a new truth 
 had come to her, she thought. Woman was nearer 
 God, purer, more holy. Had God honoured man 
 as He did woman then Christ would have had an 
 earthly father as He had an earthly mother. But 
 it was not so. The whole force of her love and 
 reverence that had been pent up for want of some- 
 thing to rest on, that had made her unhappy because 
 it could find no fitting subject, poured forth upon 
 the Virgin Mother. 
 
 She began then to understand the crucified
 
 1 64 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Christ that the nuns wore. She had at first been 
 repelled, had feared this crucifix as a grue- 
 some and unhappy memory. If it was neces- 
 sary to have a Christ at all and not a Virgin, 
 why not a living Christ, as when He spoke to the 
 children, or a risen Christ, as when He appeared to 
 the disciples ? Why this lifeless, tortured, terrible 
 dead thing upon a cross ? It frightened her at 
 first and then it filled her soul with pity. Sud- 
 denly she realised that was its meaning pity, be- 
 cause pity is the Catholic quality that makes the 
 whole world one. It is woman's Catholic quality, 
 not man's. It is pity for the suffering world and 
 all the world suffers some time or another that 
 draws it to a pitying God. And this, too, is a woman's 
 symbol, and not a man's. No man cares to dwell 
 on pain, on suffering, on the aspect of death. Man 
 is the maker; he loves the beautiful, he hates the 
 weak and ugly and inefficient. That is what binds 
 him to the world his love of everything beautiful. 
 Unbeautiful things he would away with. It is the 
 love of strength, health, colour, life that he feels 
 strongest. It is pity for weakness, sickness, death that 
 she feels most. His sacred passion which he shares 
 with God is Love; hers which she shares with God 
 is Compassion. Man has his work; he has been 
 dowered with qualities to do it. Woman has her
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 165 
 
 work, and in her heart she has her truth. Life is an 
 alternation between the two. Either alone would 
 fail. Men would destroy much good because it 
 seemed to be weak; women would preserve much 
 evil out of pity. 
 
 Therefore the crucifix is her symbol, and not his. 
 
 It was not that she realised all this in words, 
 or would so have expressed herself. Nor was she 
 told. The conviction came into her heart slowly, 
 silently, like dawn across the hills, making it beautiful. 
 It was not the uncertain flashing of barren lightning, 
 but the vivifying sun itself, that gives heat and light 
 and happiness. Often now she would sit with the 
 Sisters while they worked or read or were silent, 
 feeling herself in sympathy with them. 
 
 'I think,' said Sister Teresa, 'you are beginning 
 to understand.' 
 
 She smiled. 'Do you think I am? What makes 
 you think so ?' 
 
 'You look more happy. You used to be vexed, 
 to be troubled about something, were you not?' 
 
 ' I used to be foolish. I daresay I am still.' 
 
 The Sister smiled. 'We all are at some time or 
 other.' 
 
 'I did not understand. I thought it was all 
 women's fate to be married, whether they wanted to 
 or not. It was their only chance in life.'
 
 166 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'But you did not believe it?' 
 
 'No!' 
 
 'It is the lot of most women. It is a happy lot 
 for those who are fitted for it to have a husband, 
 children. But all women are not born to it, and 
 ours is happy too ? ' She looked up with a question. 
 
 'Yes, I believe it. I know it now since I have seen 
 you; but I was always told otherwise.' 
 
 'That there was no possible happiness for any 
 woman except in marriage?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Poor child! and is that all your Church can do 
 for you ? It is a truth, but only one of many. Is 
 the world so poor, so commonplace, that it has only 
 one way to happiness?' 
 
 'But why,' she asked, 'should it always be religious 
 Sisterhoods that women seek ? Why cannot they 
 join together for friendship and companionship with 
 no religious tie ? Community of interest, will not 
 that do ?' 
 
 The Sister smiled. 'Community of interest! 
 Will that bind anything for long ? Will it fuse a 
 man and woman into one ? or will it draw women 
 alone or men into communities ? or families into 
 nations ? Never ! Only love will do that wonder- 
 ful thing. It is a sentiment, a heat that does these 
 miracles. It is not their common interest that
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 167 
 
 makes soldiers into a regiment, but a love to some- 
 thing higher, richer, than themselves their regi- 
 ment, their country. Only a love can do it. Find 
 for woman a love outside religion, and you will 
 found secular Sisterhoods. But until then take 
 that you have.' 
 
 'Some things,' the girl said, 'in religion are so 
 hard. Why should we give up all the world because 
 of our love of God its Maker ?' 
 
 The Sister shook her head. 'When you are 
 called you will not think of that,' she answered. 
 ' But you will not be called.' She smiled. 
 
 ' How can you tell ? ' 
 
 'Look at me in the eyes.' 
 
 They looked into each other's eyes. The girl 
 saw down into the Sister's soul as into clearest 
 heaven, so pure, so bright, so full of God's own 
 sunshine. There was never there a thought of 
 earth. She looked into infinity. 
 
 The nun looked into the girl's eyes and saw below 
 a human heart. Within it burned a fire that smoul- 
 dered. It waited for a breath to fan it into flame, 
 to make of it a blood-red star. It was the star that 
 men call love. It burns alone, like those of Salami 
 and Zulamith, until the appointed time. 
 
 'You will do,' said Sister Cecilia, 'whatever is 
 inevitable. Only the inevitable is true.'
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE Professor looked about him and shook his 
 head. The heat troubled him, the sand, the heart- 
 less glare of sea and sky and distant land. But 
 his discomfort was physical only. His mind was 
 quite at peace. He was not in love with some one 
 he could not get, he was not tied to some one he 
 wanted to get rid of, he was contented with his sex 
 and way of life. He had a wife and children whom 
 he loved and who were far away. This caused him 
 sorrow, because he felt as if half of him were torn 
 away. But pain, that is, only inevitable pain, can 
 be borne with dignity. 
 
 If then he shook his head, it was at what he saw, 
 not what he felt. 'The mystery plays deepen,' 
 he thought; 'they run their course. How will 
 they end ? What will be the denouements ? 
 
 'Already there is some result. One man has 
 ceased pursuit. To Captain Warden it has become 
 evident he is not in love. Perhaps he always knew 
 he was not. He has realised it, and become a 
 
 168
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 169 
 
 simple spectator like myself, without, however, my 
 acquired knowledge. On the other hand, Holt 
 has realised he is in love, and much dislikes the 
 experience. He finds it painful, sees no chance 
 of any success, and is furious with himself- -'as if 
 he could have helped it,' the Professor laughed. 
 
 'The girl is hiding with the nuns. Will she 
 come out, or stay there ? The Indian girl is more 
 and more friendly with her lovers. She is like a 
 swimmer who catches at floating things to keep 
 upon the surface. She clings to them because 
 they are the West, and she feels the East is charm- 
 ing her back to itself. In Europe she acquired 
 a Western facet to her soul, and this is struggling 
 for self-preservation. Which will win ? 
 
 'The tie that fastens the Grahams is nearly 
 breaking. I think it will be well if it break, or 
 at least stretch a good deal. He yearns for active 
 life again, excitement, danger to rouse once more 
 the man within him. It is his only chance, and 
 hers, that they should each find their sex again 
 in solitude. Even the Holmans are troubled. But 
 that will do no harm. True marriage does not 
 mean that there are no strains upon the unity, 
 but that the unit can stand them. Theirs will 
 stand. A nun is dying, and all the Sisters are in 
 terror lest she should die before they reach Aden
 
 1 7 o ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 and a priest. Religion' and the Professor shook 
 his head again 'has but one enemy, and that is 
 priestcraft. 
 
 *I think we are unhappy on this ship.' 
 He half shut his eyes and he began to dream. 
 'We have/ he thought, 'at our universities pro- 
 fessors and teachers of many things. There are 
 professors of rocks and stones, of sand and fossil 
 bones. Animals have their students; insects, fish, 
 and birds. We study languages living and dead, 
 literature, history, medicine, surgery, statecraft; 
 the list is endless. There is but one exception, 
 and that the most important thing in life. Where 
 are the students and professors of love ? There 
 are not any. Yet it is love that has made and 
 kept the world. It alone has the key to past, to 
 present, and to future. Therefore we ignore it; 
 we do not study it. It is beneath us. 
 
 'It holds the key. Plants, insects, birds, and 
 animals rise in the scale as they perceive the nature 
 of true love and give it power. So is it with the 
 nations. Show me in past or present a nation or 
 a people that has understood it, and I will show 
 you one that succeeds, one that inherits. But the 
 solution of the problem has no absolute. It is 
 different for different natures, for different ages, 
 different necessities. It has its evolution.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 171 
 
 The Professor got out his memorandum-book 
 and pencil. 'I will make notes,' he said to him- 
 self. 'Maybe I will write a book about it some 
 day, or become Love's first lecturer. 
 
 'Darwin perceived very dimly a little of this 
 truth. He made Sexual Selection what a name ! 
 play a great part in evolution. But he restricted 
 it to mere physical appearance, feathers and such 
 like. How little he observed even the birds and 
 beasts, for all of them have their loves. They, 
 when in freedom, do not mate by chance but by 
 selection, and the attraction is not mere appear- 
 ance as far as that goes in domesticity we can 
 control it better. So we raised horses, oxen, birds, 
 and plants that are larger, stronger, more beauti- 
 ful, but without vitality or intelligence. Turn out 
 all the domestic dogs to seek a living where the wild 
 dog thrives and they would die. The same with 
 all. Vitality, passion, love, that is the secret of 
 survival, not size or strength or even intelligence. 
 So with nations. When nations decay, look at 
 their ideas of love and find the blot. 
 
 'Why did the East decay that once led the world ? 
 Because she mated children in their cradles. She 
 stifled love's selection, and bred up men and women 
 without initiative. 
 
 'Why did Rome fall? Because there were few
 
 172 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Romans left, and they degenerate. Rome is most 
 striking proof of all. 
 
 'Why did the Italian Republics rise ? Because, 
 again, they found out love. It showed in all their 
 life; it made that great burst of art. My young 
 friend Holt looks for the secret Venice had. That 
 was her secret. Love lit her life the lesser and 
 the greater loves. 
 
 'The Normans conquered Britain; what was their 
 battle-song? "The Song of Roland." 
 
 'What was the secret of England's strength in 
 the spacious times of Great Elizabeth ? It was 
 Love. They were Love's children who burst forth 
 and conquered, who wrote and sung, who lived 
 and died. 
 
 'Look at England to-day. Both in her Church, 
 her State, her Society she has made a fetish of 
 marriage. Therefore her population has increased 
 beyond all reason, flowed over into the spare places 
 of the earth while it could, and now presses on her 
 resources. Her great men have disappeared. Great 
 sons and daughters are born of great passions, not 
 of a commercial morality. Her people are become 
 a fair average and nothing else. She is decadent 
 because love makes hope, and love she has despised. 
 She has said to her sons and daughters, "Marry, 
 marry, marry!" She ought to have said, "The
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 173 
 
 only excuse for marriage is love. If you do not 
 love, then do not marry." She should have made 
 life happy for her sons and daughters who did not 
 marry. But she has despised them. The men 
 can get along in a way, because their work brings 
 them into touch with the world. But what of the 
 women ? 
 
 'Is woman nothing in herself? has she no 
 quality to the State, the Church, Society ? The 
 English State says "she is nothing"; the Church 
 says "she is nothing"; Society puts her aside. It is 
 not so in wiser countries or in wiser times. That 
 is the sentiment of Judaism to which Protestantism 
 is a reversion. A Catholic Church knows better. 
 It organises Sisterhoods of all kinds to enable 
 woman to remain single and yet be happy, and 
 have companionship, the wider sympathy and 
 knowledge, to cultivate her own gifts in safety, 
 to exercise her due influence in State, Society, and 
 Church. It supplies the tie of sentiment that binds 
 women together, which gives them force, freedom, 
 happiness. The English Church, not Catholic but 
 National, not Christian but Jewish, cares nothing 
 for them. It has no belief in men or women unless 
 they are married. Its priests all marry. It does 
 not recognise that the State, the Church, the world 
 wants unmarried men and women as much as it
 
 i 7 4 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 does married couples; that they have their talents 
 also. It does not see that the world does not want 
 the children of conventional marriages. It has not 
 seen that as the State is Man, the Church is Woman. 
 No wonder that the women at last rebel. They 
 have a grievance, ay, a bitter one. God help them ! 
 
 'But the escape is not by pretending to be men, 
 by denying their womanhood, by substituting one 
 falsehood for another. They should have influ- 
 ence in State, but not gained at such a loss. 
 
 'My Germany perhaps is following in England's 
 steps. Germany was the most sentimental of 
 nations, now it is the strongest; cause and effect, 
 cause and effect. If it become material it will 
 fall. This world is Love's kingdom and the 
 next/ The Professor laughed cheerfully. 'What 
 a book I will write. All of it will be true. No 
 one will believe. Yet the Churches ought to know. 
 They keep always saying the formula that Love is 
 God and God is Love, and then interpreting all 
 sense out of it. 
 
 'My friend ' it was Holt who passed and 
 
 stopped. 
 
 'What is the matter, Professor?' 
 
 'Why move about so restless ? Come and sit 
 down. Behold, here is a good cigar. I write a 
 book and I want information.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 175 
 
 Holt sat beside the Professor. 'And can I fur- 
 nish it ?' 
 
 'Perhaps. Tell me, have you discovered what is 
 the secret Venice had ? ' 
 
 Holt looked surprised. 'No,' he answered. 'How 
 should I ? We have left Venice behind. How 
 should I find her secrets in the Red Sea ?' 
 
 'Shall I tell you?' 
 
 'Yes, if you know.' 
 
 'I know. The secret is simple, that of love 
 under all its great and true aspects. Men loved 
 their wives and wives their husbands with a passion 
 of body and of soul. Men loved men and made 
 societies, women loved women and made sister- 
 hoods. They loved the State. They were reli- 
 gious, for they knew that the secret of religion, 
 too, is love that of humanity. They were not 
 afraid, because they knew that when man loves, 
 nothing can hurt him, even death. Is not there 
 somewhere a song to that effect ?' 
 
 'You mean,' asked Holt, 'the Song of Solomon?' 
 
 'Perhaps, my friend, you may be able to give 
 the passage in the English version. I want it for 
 my book.' 
 
 How did the old Professor guess that Holt had 
 read that passage lately, ay, and others too of that 
 same song; or perhaps Holt had not read, but
 
 176 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 merely had brought up what his heart needed ? 
 Was the Professor qualifying for the new pro- 
 fessorship ? 
 
 Holt laughed. 'Perhaps you mean, "Love is 
 strong as death. . . . Many waters cannot quench 
 love, neither can the floods drown it : if a man 
 give all the substance of his house for love, it would 
 utterly be contemned." 
 
 The Professor nodded. 'I like your English 
 text/ he said. 'And now, tell me, is it not true ?' 
 
 'That love was the secret Venice had?* 
 
 'Not Venice only, but every man and woman, 
 every city, every nation that has come to happi- 
 ness, to success, to immortality.' 
 
 'Venice died; why did she die ?* 
 
 'What does it matter to die ? We all must die, 
 men and nations all. But we shall be born again, 
 those of us who know what love is. We shed old 
 fleshly garments and put on new robes. As long as 
 love remains then life renews itself. For love is life 
 and immortality.' 
 
 Holt said, 'How did you find that truth, Pro- 
 fessor ? ' 
 
 'How do you know that what I say is true ?' 
 
 How did he know ? But first to be answered 
 was the question, did he know that what the Pro- 
 fessor said was true ? Yes, he knew. Then how
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 177 
 
 did he know ? How did the certainty come to him ? 
 Not out of thought or study. His mind had sought, 
 but his heart it was that found. They both were 
 silent. The Professor's thoughts went back. How 
 had he himself learnt it ? Out of books or lectures, 
 out of thoughts or dreams ? No, but from blue eyes 
 that had looked into his, from lips which did not 
 utter words, from hands that did not write. And 
 the knowledge went on growing always. Holt was 
 silent for a time, then said : 
 
 'You say, Professor, that the world should follow 
 Love. Therefore each man and woman should do so.' 
 
 'Of course.' 
 
 'What if he cannot? If he love, but his love 
 be not returned ?' 
 
 The Professor laughed again not loudly, but 
 with a mellow rumble of amusement and of gaiety. 
 
 'And still you do not understand,' he said. 'You 
 think love is of one person. It is not. Love is a 
 heat between two. It is the result of both acting 
 on each other. Action and reaction are always 
 equal.' 
 
 'It does not appear so always.' 
 
 'It always does appear so to those who have 
 eyes to see. No great and real love was ever unre- 
 turned. It could not be. But the manifestation 
 in each is different.'
 
 178 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'As different,' said Holt lugubriously, 'as the 
 equator and the pole.' 
 
 'Just so,' said the Professor, and made no further 
 answer. But as Holt was going away he asked : 
 
 'What of the book I lent you, Primitive Marriage? 
 Did you read it ?' 
 
 'No, I did not read it; you told me it was no 
 good/ 
 
 'I never said so,' the Professor remonstrated. 
 'It is most valuable. I told you to read and dis- 
 believe.' 
 
 'You mean, believe the opposite of what he says ? 
 Well, I will go and do so. This Red Sea makes dis- 
 belief in anything quite easy. I can hardly believe 
 there ever was a Europe.' 
 
 'Or that there ever will be Eden, eh ?' 
 
 ' Do you mean Aden ? We shall get there to- 
 morrow, I believe.'
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 As they drew towards the end of the Red Sea the 
 heat grew worse. They seemed to be within a 
 reverberating furnace, where the heat came back 
 from roof and wall and floor, from sea and sky 
 and mountain. A hot wind blew from off the 
 desert, a sirocco whose fevered breath penetrated 
 everywhere. You could not get away from it; 
 on deck or in the cabin there was no peace. It 
 moaned among the rigging. With all the fury of 
 the wind there was a breathlessness as if there was 
 no air to breathe. There was a band about each 
 chest and forehead like an iron ring. 
 
 The sun set in a crimson rayless ball that had 
 no light, but only suffering; when it disappeared 
 the night brought no relief. The darkness closed 
 upon them, the furnace door was shut. 
 
 All day Sister Cecilia had been dying. The hot 
 wind drew the life from her as from a flower, and 
 when the dark came she grew quickly worse. 
 
 She had been moved from her small cabin to 
 the hospital, a larger room with portholes opening 
 
 179
 
 180 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 forward, and a skylight on the deck. But they 
 were all closed, for the wind blew in at every open- 
 ing, bringing its heat and sand and misery. An 
 electric fan moved the close air to and fro, but the 
 heat was great, and the beat of the engines shook 
 the room. The doctor came and went and came 
 again, but he could do nothing. Death's hand was 
 on her not cold, but hot and burning, her eyes 
 were lit with fever, and her cheeks were flushed. 
 Sister Teresa knelt, and with infinite tenderness 
 looked on the dying girl. Teresa's face was calm, 
 her eyes serene and confident, while in her heart 
 there lay a terror. It was a terror worse than death, 
 a helplessness that nothing could succour, a hope- 
 lessness that saw no light of hope. She held before 
 the sightless eyes a crucifix. 
 
 The girl was dying, passing from this world 
 to that which is beyond. Her consciousness had 
 gone before, her speech had ceased, her soul was 
 fluttering on her lips, and in a moment she might 
 pass. Never another dawn, never even another beat 
 of the ship's bell that rang the hours, would come 
 and she be here. 
 
 Sister Cecilia, whither art thou going ? 
 
 Without, in the corner of the deserted saloon, 
 the other Sisters knelt. They could not help ex- 
 cept by prayer. One of them was going into the
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 181 
 
 unknown. She went alone. They could not go 
 with her. And with them sat the girl. They let 
 her come and sit with them, and watch till the 
 end came. When others had come and offered 
 help, or wished to speak, they shook their heads 
 in silence and motioned the inquirer to go away. 
 But the girl was different. She could stop, and 
 watch and grieve and pray with them. We admit 
 every one to our joy, but we keep our sorrows 
 sacred and concealed. We share them not with 
 all, but only with those who understand. For in 
 their hearts too was a fear not fear of death, but 
 worse; because there was no priest, no priest. 
 
 Sister of mine, thou passest, whither dost thou 
 go ? Thou goest all alone into the dark. There 
 is a way for souls that leads through dark to light, 
 but canst thou find it all alone ? and canst thou 
 tread so narrow and so difficult a path without 
 a guide ? and will they let thee in all unconfessed 
 and unassoilzied into the light where every speck 
 is seen ? Sister of mine, would that I could go 
 with thee; would that thy sins would stay with 
 me, and thou go free. 
 
 There was no priest, no priest. 
 
 They knelt, their faces in their hands, and through 
 their fingers dripped salt tears. They murmured 
 prayers that sounded like an echo to the waves that
 
 182 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 washed the ship. Their great distress entered the 
 girl's soul too. She knelt with them and she 
 prayed. 
 
 Sister of mine, thine eyes are dim, yet canst 
 thou see the cross, the God upon the Cross. He 
 died for thee, for all of us, and He will lead thee. 
 He will come Himself if He knew that none of 
 His servants can come to thee. Canst thou not 
 feel Him here ? In the gloom that gathers are there 
 not lights, His eyes that look to thine ? Is there 
 not a hand that closes on thy hand and leads 
 thee ? 
 
 Sister Teresa's prayer went upward to the heaven. 
 There was no priest, but God is God. She poured 
 her hope, her urgent summons, up to the gates that 
 He might hear and come. She willed that God 
 should know. Surely the Bridegroom Christ would 
 not forget His Bride who came to Him, who would 
 be lost unless He heard. 
 
 Her wedding night was come, the Bride was 
 ready. But one thing lacked there was no priest, 
 no priest to join Christ and His Bride. 
 
 The hot air fluttered to and fro, the engines 
 throbbed unceasingly. Their sound became an 
 agony that pressed into the brain. They throbbed 
 and moaned and cared not. What was life or 
 death to them ?
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 183 
 
 The end was very near. The nun's lips opened 
 and her eyes grew brighter. Teresa held the cross 
 still nearer to her. 
 
 'Oh that I were a man, a priest,' she sobbed, 
 'to give that which no woman can give.' She felt 
 her weakness. 'Had I been a man I would have 
 been a priest, and this my sister would have gone to 
 Heaven in shining robes of sinlessness. Can she 
 meet Christ without a wedding dress of purity ? 
 But I am only a woman/ 
 
 Cecilia's eyes opened still wider, a smile came on 
 her lips and she was dead. Her soul had passed 
 into the night, and Teresa sat there solitary beside 
 the dead. 
 
 For a while she sat, stunned with her sorrow, un- 
 knowing that the end had come. Then suddenly 
 there came to her a sense that she was all alone. 
 Her sister had gone from her. Within these four 
 close walls there was no other life but hers. She 
 rose and went into the outer cabin, and dropped 
 upon her knees beside the others. 
 
 They prayed, and sobs mixed with their prayers. 
 The sobs became a passion that drove through all 
 their hearts, a storm that swept across a midnight 
 sea. There was no light, no hope; no stars shone 
 on that sea, the clouds hung low and touched the 
 waters.
 
 1 84 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 The passion calmed itself and they knelt there 
 in silence. 
 
 'My dear, my dear/ said Mrs. Holman. 
 
 'Sister Cecilia is dead,' said the girl. 
 
 'I know, I know; but you must not stay here. 
 It is so late.' 
 
 'I did not think of it.' 
 
 'Come now with me. There is nothing you 
 can do, and you want rest.' 
 
 She passed her arm round the girl's waist and 
 lifted her. The nuns took no notice. They knelt, 
 and their prayers went up unceasingly. 
 
 'I did not know that you cared for her so 
 much/ 
 
 'It is not that/ replied the girl. 
 
 They passed along to the girl's cabin and entered 
 there. 
 
 'What then is it?' 
 
 'She died without a priest/ 
 
 'Is that so great a matter?' 
 
 'They say perhaps she will not get to Heaven. 
 Perhaps she is now in Purgatory, to wait who knows 
 how long/ 
 
 'Because she had not a priest to confess her and 
 give her absolution ?' 
 
 'Yes. Do you think that it is so ?'"
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 185 
 
 *I do not know. How should I know? I think 
 they are mistaken. I am sure no Church would say 
 such a terrible thing. I am sure if any Church said 
 so it would not be true. The keys of Heaven are 
 in God's hands, not man's. Do not trouble, Sister 
 Cecilia has gone home. For Heaven to her will be 
 no strange or unknown place, but home.' 
 
 The girl was silent, she was not undeceived. 
 It was not the religious dogma that troubled her. It 
 was another matter. She had thought that in the 
 nun's life she had seen a way in which women could 
 fulfil themselves alone without men. They were 
 sufficient to themselves, and if women could be so 
 as nuns, why not in other ways of life ? It was not 
 that she had wanted herself to be a nun, that she had 
 been drawn to them, but because to her they dis- 
 proved the saying that was always being thrust upon 
 her, that to women man was a necessity. They had 
 seemed to live without men in their own purity and 
 strength. And now she had suddenly realised it was 
 not so. If they had so lived it was partly because 
 of the priest, because of his teaching, guidance, care. 
 They had not lived without men, nor could they die 
 without one. The world was always man's. 
 
 And from the girl's silence the older woman felt 
 that she did not understand. 
 
 'Let us talk,' she said. 'It is too hot to sleep just
 
 1 86 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 yet, and you are too troubled.' So in the dark 
 they talked, and in some way the girl made her 
 understand. 
 
 'They are both men's worlds,' she said; 'this 
 and the next. They keep this by their strength, 
 the next by their priestcraft. We cannot escape 
 from them.' 
 
 Mrs. Holman shook her head and smiled. 'Nei- 
 ther this world nor the next is man's nor woman's, 
 but both worlds belong to them and us. They can- 
 not do without us, nor we them. Are not half the 
 virtues ours and half the strength ? And have they 
 not the other half? In this world we live as separate 
 entities, man and woman, and even then neither 
 can do without the other. In the next ' 
 
 They climbed the stairs and came out on the deck. 
 The wind had ceased, the sea was still. The ship 
 passed through a narrow strait like a broad river. 
 It was the Gate of Tears. Before her lay the Gulf 
 of Aden and the Indian Ocean. A silver dawn was 
 in the east, a light so clear, so wonderful, it seemed 
 a promise made of Heaven. 
 
 'And in the next,' she said, 'there will never be 
 a question of marrying or giving in marriage. There 
 will not be in Heaven either woman or man. Man 
 cannot enter there, nor woman. We must be per- 
 fect man and woman in one soul before we enter.'
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE heat had somewhat lessened, the hot desert 
 wind had ceased, and a fresher breeze blew up 
 from the Indian Ocean that lay beyond the Gulf. 
 But the sea and sky were still the same hard blue 
 as if made from china, and the coasts on either 
 side were barren, hot, and dry. There is a Gate 
 of Tears between sorrow and happiness, but still 
 the change is gradual. You do not leap at once 
 from one to other. Their influences extend beyond 
 their proper boundaries, and die but slowly. 
 
 Holt sat reading on the deck. He read a legend 
 of a garden planted upon that coast in the begin- 
 ning of the world. Who wrote that legend ? No 
 one knows. It comes from out the misty past to 
 us, and no one knows who fashioned it then in the 
 childhood of the world. He was some genius, and 
 he had seen truth. 
 
 Is that legend true ? Can it possibly be other 
 than true ? Could it have come to us through all 
 these centuries had it not held a truth that is eternal ? 
 
 187
 
 1 88 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 It has a soul that lives. Its form is dead and of 
 the long dead past, its imagery has faded. No one 
 seeks now with map in hand to find that garden, 
 and its name, given to a rocky barren headland 
 on that coast, is but a mockery and a laugh. But 
 its truth, its soul lives on. It is as true to-day as 
 when it first arose. For truth is always true. New 
 truths arise upon the old; new courses are added 
 to the pyramid that rises ever to the heaven. But 
 the old truths remain. They are the base on which 
 the new truths rest. Did they crumble, then would 
 the new fall into ruin also. 
 
 He read: 
 
 'The Lord God planted a garden eastward in 
 Eden; and there He put the man whom He had 
 formed. And out of the ground made the Lord 
 God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, 
 and good for food ; the tree of life also, and the tree 
 of the knowledge of good and evil/ 
 
 It is a parable of life. So is the world to every 
 man that is born into it. It is a garden fair with 
 fruits and rivers, with pleasures of all kinds. He 
 is the king. It is for him to eat these fruits, to 
 drink the water, to enjoy the garden. Life is before 
 him and the world; he will make the best of it. 
 He eats all that he wishes. He does not care to eat 
 the fruit of the forbidden tree. He does not think
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 189 
 
 of it. He does not care for knowledge, only for life. 
 And besides, he thinks that he has knowledge; he 
 gives names to things, and that is knowledge. So it 
 seems to him. 
 
 Yet he is lonely. Then he discovers woman. 
 As God made her and brought her to Adam, so 
 does woman come suddenly into the life of man. 
 Adam and she are friends, companions. But love 
 was not, nor knowledge. The man, maybe, would 
 so continue all his life. Adam was content. It 
 was not to him the serpent spoke, but to the woman. 
 It was not Adam who felt the emptiness and igno- 
 rance of life within the garden, it was Eve. He was 
 afraid, perhaps, of death. She was not. She thought 
 death would not come, or if it did, the penalty were 
 not too great. She listened when the serpent spake. 
 He said : ' Ye shall not surely die : for God doth 
 know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes 
 shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, knowing 
 good and evil.' 'And when the woman saw that the 
 tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to 
 the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, 
 she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and gave 
 also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.' 
 
 She asked for wisdom, and she received love. 
 So began the dawn of love that spreads and grows 
 to a more perfect spiritual day. So began the world
 
 IQO ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 to live, to love, to hate, to die. So began hate; for to 
 love the good is always to hate the evil. So began 
 death; for to live is also to die. 
 
 She gave to Adam and he ate. 
 
 It is the woman always who holds the man the 
 fruit. She does not know its meaning, she does 
 not know what power it has on those who eat it. 
 She looks for wisdom, and she makes the man seek 
 wisdom also. They sought for wisdom with their 
 minds; they found out love within their hearts. 
 
 It is the parable of man and woman. It is as 
 true to-day as when that ancient legend first took 
 form upon the lips of men. It will be true as long 
 as man and woman and the world endures. 'The 
 woman tempted me, and I did eat/ 
 
 Love and wisdom are the same. It is only love 
 that opens our eyes so that we see and understand. 
 So began love within the garden ; it was cast outside, 
 and there grew greater. The love of man to woman, 
 of woman to man, that is the beginning, that is the 
 great foundation on which is built the pyramid that 
 rises to the heavens. The love of man to woman, 
 of woman to man, the love of children, the love of 
 country and humanity, the great love that holds 
 the universe in one, such are the steps each built 
 upon the other, the higher resting always on the lower 
 course. We build upon the earth, and rise towards
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 191 
 
 heaven; without the lower, how shall we have the 
 upper course ? 
 
 That was the first truth. For no one knows 
 how many thousand years the world lived and 
 progressed in that truth alone. They sowed, out- 
 side the garden, seeds of the tree of the knowledge 
 of good and evil, and all the world has eaten of it. 
 
 O 
 
 So every man who loves a woman has been given of 
 that fruit, and every man who has acquired wisdom has 
 done it through love. They are the same for ever. 
 
 But what of death ? For God had said : ' Of 
 every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; 
 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, 
 thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou 
 eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.' 
 
 So had God said, yet they had eaten. And 
 though desire may quench the fear of death, yet 
 that fear returns, and every one must pay the penalty. 
 So death will come. 
 
 But no; there was another tree. Beside the tree 
 of the knowledge of good and evil grew the tree of 
 life. And it was not forbidden. True, they had not 
 desired it. Not till the fear of death is come does 
 the desire for life arise. It is fear that brings hope 
 behind it. Adam and Eve were full of fear, and said, 
 'Where then is the tree of life, that we may eat?' 
 
 But no, not yet. The time was not yet come.
 
 192 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'The Lord God said, Behold, the man is become 
 as one of us, to know good and evil : and now, lest 
 he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of 
 life, and eat, and live for ever: therefore the Lord 
 God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till 
 the ground from whence he was taken. So He drove 
 out the man : and He placed at the east of the garden 
 of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned 
 every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.' 
 
 Not yet, not yet. They have one love, they 
 must wait and make the most of that; they must 
 fear death until they learn a further truth. 
 
 And then, at last, there came into the world One 
 who put aside the flaming sword and passed into 
 the garden, who plucked the fruit from the tree of 
 life and gave it to the world. What is that fruit ? 
 It is compassion, pity. The fruit is bitter to the taste. 
 Yet when you have eaten of it you have learnt that 
 which no love can teach, that all the world is one. 
 For love has hate, but pity has no shadow. 
 
 'I think,' said Graham, stopping near Holt and 
 pointing, 'that Aden is over there. We should be 
 in by three o'clock or so.' 
 
 'Yes. That is what the Captain said. I suppose 
 you will go ashore ?' 
 
 'Of course,' said Graham. 'Aden is not a pleasant 
 place. It is a barren rock, with sand instead of
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 193 
 
 grass. It is a dreary, hot, and horrid hole. Aden ! 
 I think that Hell would be a better name. If that 
 was once the garden where Adam lived with Eve, 
 it must have changed somewhat.' 
 
 'Of course it changed,' said Holt. 'Were not 
 Adam and Eve turned out ?' 
 
 'And the garden was burnt up,' said Graham. 
 'It served it right. It was a sorry trick Eve played 
 on Adam there. It would have been more kind and 
 just to turn Eve out and leave Adam in the garden. 
 But that is always the way. They do the things, we 
 suffer for them.' 
 
 Holt laughed. 'I daresay Adam would have 
 escaped and followed Eve.' 
 
 Graham looked at him. 'Perhaps he would. 
 There is no end to the folly of men about wome,n. 
 "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil." The 
 good is little and is soon learnt, but the evil we keep 
 on learning all our lives. That fruit she gave was 
 the dead-sea apple, pleasant to look at, but in the 
 mouth as ashes.' 
 
 ' If Aden is so bad,' said Holt, 'why go ashore at all ?' 
 
 'Because,' said Graham, 'after this ship even 
 Aden will be an Eden. There will be room at 
 least to turn ourselves and stretch and have some 
 sense of freedom. Shall we be able to sleep ashore ?' 
 
 'I doubt it. Probably we shall sail at midnight.'
 
 i 9 4 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Well,' said Graham, 'I want to sleep ashore, 
 to have a bed and not a bunk, to have a room and 
 not a cabin, to have some air that does not smell 
 of oil and engines. I shall take a bag ashore and 
 hope for the best.' 
 
 * It will be posted in the saloon before we land what 
 time we sail.' 
 
 'I know that game,' said Graham. 'They will 
 say the ship leaves at midnight. You come on board 
 and find a new notice that you sail at dawn. At 
 dawn you learn that you will sail at ten. Finally, 
 you get off at noon.' He nodded sagely. 'To- 
 morrow you all will envy me.' 
 
 'You will be left behind.' 
 
 But Graham only laughed. 'Are you going ashore ?' 
 he asked. 
 
 'I think so, in the evening when it is cooler.' 
 
 'To look for apples?' 
 
 'You forget that it was Eve who found the apple 
 and not Adam.' 
 
 'Then man was innocent. But nowadays men 
 look for apples too, and find them. Are the Holmans 
 going ashore ?' 
 
 'I do not know. I think that Holman is, not 
 Mrs. Holman.' 
 
 'And Warden?' 
 
 'Yes. We go together/
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 195 
 
 'Let me tell you something. Have an eye on 
 Hamlet and Othello if they should go ashore/ 
 
 'Why, what should they be up to ?' 
 
 Graham shook his head. 'They are not friendly. 
 There is a bitterness between them. Perhaps the 
 fruit the steward gives us is not ripe, and sets their 
 teeth on edge. They may have indigestion.' 
 
 'What does it matter if they have?' asked Holt. 
 'It does not kill.' 
 
 'It does sometimes,' said Graham, 'or makes one 
 wish to.' Then he walked away. 
 
 Yes, love means hate also, and yet take love from 
 out the world, and what is left ? What is there left 
 of Eden but bare hills ? 
 
 A promontory stretching into the sea, whose 
 sides are rock, whose feet are yellow sand. There 
 is not a green thing anywhere save a few palms. 
 From sea to crest is but a burning waste of rock, 
 and beyond are other hills as bare, as barren. The 
 sun beats on them and rebounds from them, echoing 
 and re-echoing, heat and light that burn and sear. 
 There is a carnival of sunlight, for it has no enemy 
 and no foil. It is an appropriate end to that Red 
 Sea and outer gulf of which it is the key, a barren 
 key to such a barren sea. Its bareness, quaintness, 
 its untempered glare affect one like a sense of sin. 
 
 The ship came in and anchored.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 OTHELLO rose, and going to the entrance of the 
 verandah looked into the street. The sun was 
 getting low, a crimson ball that hung above the 
 hills, the evening stillness was approaching. Over 
 the roads the dust hung like a pall that the sun 
 turned into crimson, and the sea was still. The 
 heat seemed worse than ever, but there was a prom- 
 ise that the day was nearly done, that night was 
 near with coolness, rest, and peace. 
 
 He paused a moment, then he looked back over 
 his shoulder to Hamlet sitting all alone. Hamlet 
 was watching, saw Othello toss his head backward 
 and walk out. Then Hamlet rose and followed 
 him. 
 
 They went thus down the road towards the harbour, 
 turned and made along the sea towards the point. 
 Othello kept in front and Hamlet followed at a dis- 
 tance. The heat burned them, the glare enveloped 
 them, carts came by and cast a choking cloud of 
 dust upon them, but they kept on. 
 
 They left the town and followed the sea as closely 
 
 196
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 197 
 
 as they could. They climbed over the stones and 
 threaded their way amid the rocks. Sometimes 
 they looked to see that no one followed; once or 
 twice Othello stopped, looked round, saw some one, 
 a coolie passing or a boat too near, and went on again. 
 The sun sank lower. 
 
 At last Othello stopped in a small ravine. It 
 seemed deserted. Even the harbour was quite 
 hidden, for they had turned the point. Hamlet 
 approached and they stood face to face. 
 
 'Are you ready ?' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 'Which of us gives the word ?' 
 
 'I do not care. You do it. We ought to have 
 seconds; but what matter?' 
 
 Each drew a pistol from his pocket. Hamlet 
 stepped back ten or twelve paces and then turned. 
 
 They were about to fight for what ? Had 
 you asked either of them you would have got no 
 clear answer. They had quarrelled, they hated 
 each other. They wished to fight to ease an over- 
 charged brain, as a storm-cloud bursts that peace 
 may come again. 
 
 They fought about a girl, the little Princess ? 
 Had you put it to them so, they would have stared 
 at you and wondered. So it began, no doubt, in 
 rivalry, but that was long ago, or seemed so. She
 
 198 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 had been kind to both, she had encouraged both in 
 all innocence. Perhaps she had not learned to 
 choose as women do in other countries, but left 
 herself to be the prize of war or the sport of Fate. 
 Or perhaps, more truly, she only talked to them 
 and clung to them because she felt herself drifting 
 back to that deep sea whence she had risen. 
 
 And they ? They had quarrelled, they were 
 about to fight. For what ? Because they wanted 
 to. Is that not sufficient reason ? And is there 
 ever in this world a better ? 
 
 They faced each other. Hamlet counted loudly 
 and clearly, 'One, two, three.' There were two 
 cracks, two bursts of flame. Othello stood unhurt, 
 and saw as in a dream that Hamlet staggered and 
 fell down. 
 
 Still he did not move. The whole world had 
 become unreal. The sunset fading in the west, 
 the shadows that crept forth from out the hills, 
 the placid sea, the little stretch of sand, and Hamlet 
 lying there were phantoms, dreams, himself a dream 
 within them. His real self, his thoughts, his will, 
 his consciousness of self, where were they ? Gone 
 out of him as when a man is sleeping. 
 
 A shout aroused him. A man was coming down 
 the rocks. 'I am too late/ thought Holt; 'I let 
 them get away from me.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 199 
 
 'Hallo!' he called. 'Have you had an accident?' 
 
 As when a sleeper is wakened Othello's con- 
 sciousness now came back with suddenness. It 
 came as in a flood. He understood at once all 
 that had happened; its folly, its fatuity, its useless- 
 ness, and yet its inevitableness overwhelmed him and 
 astonished him. Why had he done this ? Had he 
 done it ? Was it he ? And was that Hamlet ? 
 
 With a sudden jerk he tossed his pistol far into 
 the sea and ran to Hamlet. A cold fear clutched 
 his heart. 
 
 But Holt had reached Hamlet first, and stooped 
 down to see where he was wounded, fearing that 
 he was dead. To his surprise he found Hamlet's 
 eyes wide open, almost as if he waked from sleep. 
 
 'Where are you hit?' asked Holt. 
 
 Hamlet looked at him wonderingly but half 
 understanding, and did not answer. Holt put 
 his arm about him and raised him up. Then was 
 evident a mark along his forehead and the side of 
 his head, where the bullet had grazed past. A few 
 drops of blood fell from it. 
 
 'I think,' said Hamlet doubtfully, 'I have been 
 wounded in the head. I felt a pain, and suddenly 
 turned giddy.' 
 
 'It is nothing,' said Holt. 'Stand up,' and he 
 helped him.
 
 200 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Othello looked at him dumbly. 
 
 'You are all right,' said Holt. 'An awkward 
 accident. Lucky it is no worse/ 
 
 'An accident,' said Hamlet, understanding. 'I 
 shot at birds I slipped.' 
 
 'Just so,' said Holt gravely; 'an accident that 
 might occur to any one.' 
 
 Hamlet picked up his pistol, looked at it. 'A 
 stupid thing,' he said, and threw it in the sea. 
 
 'Come, let us go,' said Holt; 'it is growing dark. 
 We must be getting back. A pleasant stroll here by 
 the sea ? ' 
 
 They did not answer. Othello drew next to 
 Hamlet and they walked together. Holt wondered 
 should he separate them. But no. The storm had 
 passed. 
 
 They walked back almost silently. Othello sud- 
 denly finding his voice declared that he was hot, 
 and that was all. They came down to the harbour 
 just at dark. 
 
 'Are you coming on board?' asked Hamlet. 
 
 'Not yet,' said Holt; 'I dine ashore. And you?' 
 
 They shook their heads. Holt watched the 
 boat put off, and when it had gained a little distance 
 he saw the two were talking eagerly. 
 
 'They are good friends,' he thought. 'And 
 all goes well. Love turns to hate, and then to love
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 201 
 
 again another love so all goes well. But it 
 nearly ended ill. I was too late.' 
 
 He strolled back to the little club beside the har- 
 bour that offers hospitality to passengers. He 
 found no one there. The verandah was all dark. 
 He sat and thought. Something had made his 
 thoughts go faster and his memory keener. 'Love 
 carries hate with it,' he thought. 'It is its shadow. 
 Whom shall I hate?' He laughed, for time would 
 show, and presently he heard a man come up the 
 steps; he came into the verandah and stood against 
 a post, leaning out. His figure was outlined against 
 the glow that held the sky, his face could not be seen. 
 But Holt knew that it was Warden, and he remem- 
 bered. 
 
 He rose and went to him. 
 
 'Hullo!' said Warden, wondering who it was. 
 
 'Hullo!' said Holt. 'I have remembered. 
 Twenty years ago and the corner of a field beneath 
 some trees a fight.' 
 
 'Has it taken you all this time?' said Warden. 
 'I remembered long ago.' 
 
 ' How long ago ? ' 
 
 ' Do you remember the second night on board ? 
 We had a talk.' 
 
 'We had,' said Holt; 'you came to me. We 
 made a compact. Did you know then?'
 
 202, ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Yes, I knew then.' 
 
 ' Why did you not tell me ? ' 
 
 'Let us sit down,' said Warden. 'Let us recall 
 what we remember. We were boys together, we 
 were friends, we quarrelled.' 
 
 'What did we quarrel about ?' 
 
 'I have forgotten,' said Warden. 
 
 'And so have I, but I remember it was bitter/ 
 
 'Yes, it was bitter; so we fought.' 
 
 'You won, I think.' 
 
 'The fight was pretty equal, I should think. I 
 know we neither of us could appear at class for 
 days.' 
 
 'And then you left.' 
 
 'And then I left. We had not made it up, at least 
 openly. We did not meet again for nearly twenty 
 years, and then as friends.' 
 
 'As friends.' 
 
 'At first I could not remember any more than 
 you could. It was the girl's being there that re- 
 called it to me. You wanted her, I wanted her. 
 I felt beginning to be angry. The anger made me 
 remember.' 
 
 'I was never inclined to be angry with you,' said 
 Holt. 
 
 'You had no reason,' answered Warden. 'You 
 were the favoured from the first. I felt it by some
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 203 
 
 instinct. You were in my way, not I in yours. 
 Within her heart she wanted you/ 
 
 Holt looked at him. 'And was that why,' he 
 asked, 'you came and made that compact, so that we 
 might keep friends through all ? You are a wiser 
 man than I. I did not want to make it.' 
 
 Warden laughed. 'I wished to keep friends with 
 you; I wished, besides, to have a little share in what 
 was going. I knew that the girl would not care less 
 for you because you did not take her whole atten- 
 tion. I liked to see her and to talk to her. I even 
 thought then that I might do more if she allowed me. 
 She did not.' 
 
 'And then?' asked Holt. 
 
 'I learned as I have learned before that I am not 
 made for marriage. I am a soldier. I have all I 
 want. My regiment is my mistress. And no man 
 shall have two.' 
 
 'Truly?' asked Holt, trying to see him in the 
 dark. 
 
 'Yes, truly.' 
 
 'You are a wiser man than I,' said Holt again. 
 
 'Perhaps this time,' said Warden. 'Because 
 you had a reason to be jealous. You were in love, 
 I was not. I only thought I might be, and was not. 
 You thought you were not did not wish to be 
 and were.'
 
 204 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 'And besides,' continued Warden, 'you were 
 always rather a dreamer, you know. You looked 
 so far ahead, you used to see things out of sight and 
 did not see those before your feet until you fell over 
 them.' 
 
 Holt pondered. 'Do you mean I am like that 
 now ?' he asked. 
 
 And Warden laughed. 'Like that now? Why, 
 you are worse than ever. You will not stretch your 
 hand to take what is yours already.' 
 
 'It is not mine,' said Holt. 
 
 'Fruit must be picked,' said Warden. 
 
 A servant came in and lit a lamp. The light 
 brought with it a return to outer things from 
 thought to sight, from past and future to the present. 
 
 Holt remembered the scene he had been at, 
 the almost tragedy upon the shore. He told of 
 it, and added, 'I think that they were friends again 
 as they went on board; but will they continue so ?' 
 
 'Why not?' asked Warden. 
 
 'The little Princess. They will find her there, 
 and their quarrel will reopen.' 
 
 'I think not,' answered Warden. 'I think they 
 have forgotten her, or, even worse, you will find 
 they hate her.' 
 
 'Why?'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 205 
 
 But Warden shrugged his shoulders. 'How 
 should I know ? It is so always. If a girl, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, makes two men hate 
 each other, they will hate her too. I don't know 
 why. It is so.' 
 
 'Perhaps,' said Holt, 'it is Nemesis/ 
 
 'Sit down and analyse it if you like, but that 
 is not my line. I know the fact. Suppose you 
 and I had quarrelled about the girl we might 
 have done so we should have certainly ended by 
 quarrelling with her. If two men fight a duel to 
 get a woman, does she ever fall to either or to the 
 survivor ? Never. They hate her and she them. 
 Women are not the reward of fighting; their bodies 
 may be, not their hearts. They will not be won in 
 such a manner. Probably that was the real reason 
 that led me to suggest our compact. If we had 
 quarrelled, neither would have got her.' 
 
 'And so?' 
 
 ' So if you get her and you will if you have 
 common sense you have to thank me for it/ 
 
 'I will,' said Holt. He rose and looked out into 
 the dark. 'He is a wiser man than I,' he thought; 
 'a wiser man than I/
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE Professor left the ship at Aden. He was 
 going to Mombasa, and would find a steamer in a 
 few days to take him there. 
 
 So Holman gave a dinner at the hotel to say 
 good-bye. They were sorry to part with him, to 
 lose him from the ship; they were sorry to think 
 of him, now growing old, returning to the heat, the 
 banishment, the dangers of a tropic wilderness. 
 He should have been at home in some Professor's 
 chair, in place of Clearasmud, for instance, instead 
 of wandering about alone. But men must work 
 for women; so it has been, and is, and will be. 
 Clearasmud is unmarried. 
 
 They drank his health, and sang him songs, 
 and when they left to go back to the steamer he 
 walked down to the harbour with them. 
 
 'When shall we meet again, Professor? In a few 
 years we shall be home again. Come and see us in 
 England.' 
 
 'Come and see me in Germany,' said the Pro- 
 fessor. 'In two years I shall be back.' 
 
 206
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 207 
 
 'Come and see me in India, Professor,' said 
 Holt. 
 
 The Professor shook his head. 'No, no. When 
 I leave Africa I go straight home. No more East 
 for me.' 
 
 'Where shall we meet?' said Holman. 'Who 
 knows if we shall ever meet ? And perhaps if we 
 do meet it will be upon a battlefield.' 
 
 'Why not?' asked the Professor. 'The best 
 friends fight and then are friends again. But will 
 you fight ?' 
 
 'Try us,' said Warden. 
 
 'Ah, some of you, no doubt. But we think 
 your nation will not fight. Your men are become 
 as women, and go about and beg for peace because 
 they are afraid. Your women go about and say 
 they are men, and cry for a sex war. A house 
 divided against itself will fall. Our men are men, 
 our women are women still.' 
 
 'There are men and women in England too, 
 Professor. Make no mistake.' 
 
 'Mein Gott, there are!' he cried. 'It is but 
 froth that comes up to the surface. War will blow 
 the froth away, and show the liquor underneath - 
 the good red blood. Here's to our next meeting 
 anywhere!' He raised his hand and gave a shout 
 that made the harbour echo.
 
 208 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Alas!' he said more sadly, 'I am old, and shall 
 not fight again; but I was at Sedan.' 
 
 'Good-bye, Professor.' They all shook hands 
 with him. 
 
 'Good-bye, and go with God,' he answered. 
 'Holman, my friend, write to me some time, and 
 give me news of Mrs. Holman. Warden, you are 
 a soldier, I cannot wish you better. My young 
 friend, Holt ' He paused. 
 
 ' Professor.' 
 
 'You are a dreamer. Never give up dreaming. 
 Dreams are the real and the truest life. Never 
 say to yourself, "I will awaken and see clearly 
 and be master of my fate." Your dreams are real 
 and your awakening would be false. Dream on.' 
 
 They stepped on board the boat, and left the 
 Professor standing on the beach. He called to 
 them across the water, 'God go with you.' They 
 answered. Then the night took him and the silence. 
 
 The steamer sailed at ten. In half an hour the 
 town had disappeared with all its lights, and they 
 were out again into the open sea. The harbour 
 light flashed on the horizon like a fading star. 
 
 A woman walked along the decks. She stooped 
 to look more closely at each man as she went past, 
 for the decks were dimly lit.
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 209 
 
 She went down one side, but did not find the 
 man she sought. She crossed, but had no better 
 fortune on the other. She came to the little smok- 
 ing-room and looked within. Holman and Holt 
 and Warden sat and talked and smoked. She 
 paused, then going to the door she entered. 
 
 'Where is my husband ?' 
 
 Her voice was sharp and anxious, her face was 
 drawn, her deshabille made her look older, crosser, 
 harder. 
 
 The men rose to their feet. 
 
 'Is he not with you?' answered Holman. 
 
 'Should I come and ask for him if he were in 
 the cabin ? No, he has not returned. I woke and 
 found the ship was going, but he had not come in. 
 Has he come on board?' 
 
 The men looked at each other. No one had 
 seen him come on board, and they remembered he 
 had not come with them down to the boat. 
 
 'He must be on board, of course,' said Holman. 
 They went to look. They did not find; there was 
 no sign of Graham, and Holt remembered he had 
 said he would sleep ashore. 
 
 'He has missed the ship?' she said, when she 
 was told. 'I do not believe it. No one is such a 
 fool as that. He has stayed behind on purpose 
 and you know it.'
 
 210 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'We do not know it,' answered Holman gravely. 
 'If he has, it is not with our knowledge or conni- 
 vance.' 
 
 She looked at them with doubt. 'Men always 
 hold together,' she muttered, and turned away 
 towards the door. 
 
 The Captain stood there looking in. 'Pardon, 
 madam,' he said, 'there is a letter. A boatman 
 brought it just as we weighed the anchor. It was 
 to me. I did not open it till just a minute ago. 
 And see within.' 
 
 He held a letter to her. It was for her, addressed 
 in her husband's hand. She took it to the light 
 and read it. 
 
 Her face turned red, then pale, and as she looked 
 up her eyes were full of tears. She would have 
 fallen, but Holman took her arm. He led her out 
 towards her cabin, and the men, who had been 
 filled with dislike and amusement, were touched 
 with pity. They could not bear to see a woman 
 weeping so. 
 
 'I wonder what it is,' said Warden. 
 
 When Holman came back he told them. 'He 
 has gone,' he said; 'he never intended to come 
 back on board.' 
 
 'Where has he gone ?' 
 
 'He has stayed in Aden, and will go to East
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 211 
 
 Africa with the Professor. It appears he has ar- 
 ranged it all.' 
 
 'What will she do?' 
 
 'I don't know. She has money of her own. 
 She is now too dazed to think. She never expected 
 such a thing/ 
 
 'She might have done,' said Holt. 'She badgered 
 him sometimes beyond endurance.' 
 
 'He was just as bad/ said Warden. 
 
 'It is the best he could have done,' said Holman 
 presently. 'He was never happy after he left the 
 army.' 
 
 'She made him, didn't she?' 
 
 'He oughtn't to have allowed himself to be made. 
 There are times to give way and times not to give 
 way, as Solomon said. That was a time not to 
 give way/ 
 
 'Marriage,' said Holt thoughtfully, 'does not 
 turn out always well/ 
 
 'Nothing does,' said Holman, 'unless you help 
 it. This one seemed happy enough at first, till 
 he made his great mistake and listened to her 
 against his better judgment. After that all went 
 ill. He hated himself for being idle, and he was 
 fit for nothing else. She despised him for being 
 idle and not making money or position for her. 
 She thought he might be anything, but he had in
 
 212 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 him no real capacity except for soldiering. He had 
 surrendered his manhood to her. Now he has gone 
 back to a life that will pull him together once more.' 
 
 'I wonder,' said Holt, 'if they will ever live to- 
 gether once more ?' 
 
 'No one can tell/ 
 
 'They say,' said Warden, 'that marriages are 
 made in Heaven. They make them often badly.' 
 
 'Why can't one know beforehand ?' said Holt. 
 'Is it not enough to love a woman and that she 
 loves you ? Why are you made to love if you are 
 not meant to marry ? You have no choice. It 
 makes one fear, for a mistake will make two lives 
 unhappy. And yet how can one tell ? It is a 
 lottery.' 
 
 'It is a lottery,' said Warden, 'in which the blanks 
 are many and the prizes few/ 
 
 Holman looked up and laughed. 'To hear you 
 bachelors discourse of marriage,' he said scorn- 
 fully, 'is to watch blind men at search in a dark 
 room for a black cat that isn't there. You talk of 
 luck and lotteries as if it were all chance. You 
 blame the blue, blue sky, your damned ill-luck, the 
 woman and that is all you know/ 
 
 'Tell us, then, of the truth,' said Warden; 'you 
 married men should give us of your knowledge. 
 You never do. You talk of mysteries and shake
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 213 
 
 your heads like augurs. You let us bachelors drift 
 into an unknown sea without a chart or even a word 
 of warning. Then if things go wrong you blame 
 us. It is your fault. Open our eyes, lighten the 
 dark room, disclose the cat, and coat him with 
 luminous paint that we may catch him. What is 
 marriage ?' 
 
 'Listen to me,' said Holman. * Marriage is not 
 a thing, a contract with fixed terms and fixed rela- 
 tions. It is an evolution. It is a life that changes 
 always. It is the growth of two into one that always 
 progresses. You young men fall in love with a girl 
 and she returns it. As you say, that is not your 
 fault nor your merit. You cannot help it, either 
 of you. That is what is meant by the saying that 
 marriages are made in Heaven. You cannot fall 
 in love as you will, nor can you prevent yourself 
 doing so. Heaven says to the man, "Marry that 
 girl," and to the girl, "Marry that man." So far 
 so good. You marry. Then it is your turn to do 
 something. Heaven has given you a woman who 
 may become a wife; Heaven has given her a man 
 who may become a husband; but you must help. 
 Don't think Fate will do it all.' 
 
 'Having gone so far,' said Warden, 'she might 
 go all the way and make a complete business of it, 
 I should think.'
 
 214 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'That is not her way,' said Holman. 'She has 
 done enough. Men and women are not machines 
 to be started on a track and left to run. Marriage 
 is perpetual growth. Its beginning is physical, its 
 development is spiritual. From the day you marry, 
 the one decreases and the other increases, or should 
 do so. 
 
 'Again, marriage is a balance. There is the man, 
 the woman, and together they make an unit. But 
 let the man cease to be a man, let the woman cease 
 to be a woman, and the balance is upset. Then 
 the whole suffers. It falls to pieces. The force 
 that holds each to each and makes them one is the 
 force of difference, not of sameness.' 
 
 'It seems most difficult,' said Warden. 
 
 'It is,' said Holman. 'A world where things 
 were easy would not be worth the living in.' 
 
 He laughed and went away. 
 
 The two young men were silent. To Holt it 
 seemed that Holman's words were meant as warn- 
 ing, that love was a sacred fire from Heaven that 
 must be kept alight or it would die. To its fulfil- 
 ment went everything a man possessed his body, 
 life, and soul, his will, his knowledge. Heaven 
 begins, but will and knowledge consummate. 
 
 'Holman has frightened me,' said Warden, rising. 
 'He said that our ideas of marriage were black cats
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 215 
 
 in darkened rooms sought by blind men, and the 
 cats were not there. But his reality is worse.' 
 
 'How worse ?' asked Holt. 'What is his reality ?' 
 
 'According to what he said, marriage is a lot 
 of tigers in a cage, sought by two children, with 
 every tiger there,' said Warden. 'Are you not 
 afraid?' 
 
 'Not I,' laughed Holt. 
 
 'Then you are mad,' said Warden. 
 
 'What if I am?' 
 
 'It is the only sanity,' said Warden, 'in affairs 
 of love/
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 HOLT and the girl had come into a new world. 
 
 The burning air was gone, the barren coasts, 
 the hard and heartless sea; the strife, the trouble, 
 and the restlessness. The skies were deeper, 
 softer, like a sea filled with a golden tide; the 
 seas were like another firmament beneath, so clear, 
 so full of light, and the winds blew softly, mur- 
 muring low of the home from whence they came 
 of mountains covered with eternal snow, of 
 forests peopled with great trees and creepers, of 
 plains where stranger peoples lived. It held in it 
 the warmth of women's cheeks, the softness of their 
 kisses, the laugh of children, the romance and 
 strength of men. It whispered in their ears that 
 they were on the threshold of a world where all 
 was new, where dreams became reality, where 
 space became infinity and time drew into an eter- 
 nity. It told of secrets that have been for ever and 
 will be for evermore. It seemed to them both that 
 they lived within a magic circle where were they 
 two alone. The world went on about them -
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 217 
 
 there was the ship, the other people, the routine of 
 life, but that was all unreal. It was a phantom 
 world and the only realities were themselves. The 
 world went on its dull routine, it ate and drank, 
 and slept and talked, and they with it; but all 
 that was mechanical. The real life was when the 
 two together sat beside the rail and looked into 
 the sea, when the night closed about them and the 
 stars looked down. Then their souls came from 
 out their hiding-places his like a burning star, 
 hers like a faint reflection on the snows of that 
 which is to come. 
 
 Their lips said little, but their thoughts touched, 
 and each sought to draw the other but to stand firm 
 themselves. 
 
 'When we are married,' he said suddenly. 'When 
 we are married - 
 
 'Why should I marry you?' she asked. 
 
 'Because I love you.' 
 
 'That might be a reason you should marry me, 
 but why should I marry you ?' 
 
 'Because you love me.' 
 
 'Do I, do I ? No.' She shook her head. 
 
 'You love me. You have loved me always from 
 the time you saw me first and answered me in 
 Venice. You have tried to run from me, to find 
 somewhere a place to hide from me, but there is
 
 2i8 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 no escape from love. You took it with you, and it 
 brought you forth again to me/ 
 
 'No, no, I do not love you. I like to hear you 
 talk, and that is all. It is some fate that draws us 
 so together only some fate, or chance, not love. 
 I could not love; I do not.' 
 
 'You love me though you do not know it. You 
 are the magnet and you draw me to you. The 
 Pole is still and white and silent as you are, but it 
 is the Pole that draws the needle, not the quivering 
 steel that draws the Pole. You draw me and I 
 answer. But it is your love that draws me though 
 you know it not.' 
 
 ' If I possessed it should I not know it ? I do 
 not love you, no, nor have I wish to do so. I should 
 be afraid. Why should I give to you my life ?' 
 
 'To take mine in exchange.' 
 
 'I do not want your life and I will keep my own. 
 I cannot follow you to that strange love-country.' 
 
 'You shall not follow me, but we will go there 
 hand in hand. I think that you will know that 
 country better than I do. It is your country.' 
 
 'I do not know it nor the way. I will not go 
 there. Why should I go, why should you go ? 
 What should we find that we have not ?' 
 
 'A soul.' 
 
 'Have you not now a soul?'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 219 
 
 'No!' 
 
 'Nor I?' 
 
 'Nor you, my lady of the snows. You have 
 no soul. But together we shall make one. Heat 
 and light come not from one, but two.' 
 
 'Have I no light nor heat?' 
 
 'Your lights are northern lights that flash at 
 midnight. They have no warmth. You have no 
 soul.' 
 
 'I do not want a soul, then, if I have not one 
 now. I am quite happy. I like my northern 
 lights and my fair snows. You are a dreamer, and 
 you talk in parables and symbols. I know you are 
 the dreamer; your friend has told me.' 
 
 'Those who are called the dreamers are so called 
 because they raise their eyes a little from the earth 
 and see into the heavens.' He laughed and looked 
 at her. 'Lift up your eyes and look with me into 
 my dream, that is not mine but yours.' 
 
 'I am afraid,' she said. 'It is a dream. Suppose 
 the dream should be an unhappy one, a nightmare 
 for us, as it has been to others. Is it not better 
 not to dream, to keep one's feet on earth and walk, 
 than try to fly and fail ?' 
 
 'We shall not fail.' 
 
 'How can you tell or I ? The road is strange 
 that you would lead me, and we do not know the
 
 220 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 way. We do not know where we should go, what 
 we should seek. You talk of love. How do you 
 know you have it and not some mirage ? You talk of 
 marriage, what is marriage ? Come, let us reason.' 
 
 He did not answer. Does a hungry man who 
 sees a feast before him listen when one says to 
 him : ' Come, let us reason, are you really hungry ? 
 Is that the fruit for eating ? Let us consider first 
 what hunger is and whether you are really hungry. 
 Let us consider whether fruits are made for eating?' 
 Does he listen ? Is reason justified of reason then ? 
 
 She smiled at him. 
 
 'You do not answer. Have you then no words ?' 
 
 'I have no words. Where are there any words 
 in all the world ? How can I tell you of a country 
 where I have not been ? ' 
 
 'Many have been there. Cannot we learn from 
 them ? ' 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 'You wish to ask the way? You think that 
 there are teachers ? There are the poets. Have 
 not all the great poets of the world tried to make 
 words and failed ? Words are such weaklings, 
 they are to feelings as paper is to gold. I might 
 give you words and say they are worth this or that, 
 but in themselves they have no value. The gold 
 must be within your heart, your heart.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 221 
 
 'And there is none?' she said; 'the treasury is 
 empty? Is that what you would say?' 
 
 'That is what I would say. My heart is full, 
 and I must give you all it holds.' 
 
 'And leave yourself a beggar?' 
 
 'So I wish to be.' 
 
 'And you take nothing in return?' 
 
 'Yes, I will take you, all of you. I want some- 
 where to put my gold. Open your heart and I 
 will fill it.' 
 
 'I will not open it until I know what you would 
 put there. Perhaps I would not care for it, and it 
 may be that in my heart there is some treasure too, 
 that it is not empty as you tell me. There is some 
 gold, and you would steal it and give nothing. So 
 I must keep its doors close shut.' 
 
 'You don't believe me.' 
 
 'Neither do I believe nor disbelieve you. You 
 say that you have love for me. I ask you what is 
 love; you cannot tell me. You say that you will 
 make me love you, and again I ask what is the love 
 that I must give you, and again no answer. Would 
 you have me shut my eyes and be quite blind ?' 
 
 'I would not have you so. You are so. But 
 I would cure your blindness in marriage.' 
 
 'And what is marriage?' she asked, laughing. 
 
 'I am not married. How can I say?'
 
 222 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'You are a worthy doctor. You tell me I am 
 blind and you will cure me. I ask you how; you 
 answer marriage. I ask you what is marriage, and 
 you say that you have no idea. Is that the way 
 that doctors treat their patients, with a prescription 
 that is to them unknown ? ' 
 
 'It has cured others.' 
 
 ' How do you know ? ' 
 
 'I see it/ 
 
 'Maybe. Some like it. But others there are it 
 poisons. How do you know it will not poison me ? 
 I think your system is a kill or cure. What harm 
 is there in this blindness that I should take such 
 risks ? Why should I not continue blind ? No ! 
 Let us consider, if you wish, what marriage is before 
 we think of jumping into it/ 
 
 'What do you think it ought to be ?' 
 
 'I do not know. Let us consider what it is, next 
 what it ought to be, and then we can decide.' 
 
 'So be it,' and he laughed. 'Let us discuss.' 
 
 'Let us observe, and then discuss what we have 
 seen you the man's side and I the woman's so 
 shall we learn.' 
 
 The gods heard and laughed.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 ALL the ship people watched and understood. 
 They left them quite alone. They saw the two, 
 the man and girl, groping about as blind folk do in 
 daylight, and quite unconscious that they were ob- 
 served. The lovers thought that no one saw that 
 which no one could help seeing. They thought 
 themselves in outward semblance just what they had 
 been, that no one would guess that there was any 
 change. They went about as in a dream, seeking 
 often each other's company as drawn by some at- 
 traction. But often, too, each sat alone, and dreamed 
 alone, as if the world did not exist. 
 
 She tried to comprehend what love and marriage 
 should be, asking herself eternal questions. She 
 stood as by a river flowing past, longing to step into 
 it, yet afraid because she did not know its depths, its 
 force, nor whither it would take her. She must 
 know first her way. 
 
 'Tell me/ she asked him, 'have you discovered ?' 
 
 'No;' he shook his head. 'No one can. And 
 
 "3
 
 224 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 if I could I would not. I am not afraid of the un- 
 known; I want it; I am tired of beaten tracks.' 
 
 'Yes; you are reckless, I am prudent. I have 
 looked.' 
 
 'What have you found ?' 
 
 'I looked about for love, and I found this. Othello 
 and Hamlet were in love with the Princess. At least 
 they thought so, and they wanted her to think so. 
 Now they are not in love with her, and hardly speak 
 to her.' 
 
 'That was not love.' 
 
 'Not love! How should one know what is or is 
 not ? She thought she liked them, but now she 
 never looks at them. 
 
 'That was not love. She is the East, they are 
 the West. You cannot mate two contradictions. 
 They saw in her Romance and followed her; she 
 saw in them Romance and held to them. Now 
 the West calls to them, and her Romance has gone. 
 The East that sparkles in this sea and murmurs in 
 the wind has claimed her back. She fears the West. 
 That was not love. Go on.' 
 
 She laughed and blushed a little. 'Then there 
 was Captain Warden. He thought he liked me, 
 did he not ? But he has changed his mind.' 
 
 'You thought you liked him, and you changed 
 your mind.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 225 
 
 She smiled again. 'And such is love,' she said. 
 'It lasts a summer's day and dies.' 
 
 'Love never dies. He did not love you, nor you 
 him. Go on, another case.' 
 
 'There are those German girls/ 
 
 'You mean the girls who are going out to marry 
 men they have not seen ? That is not love.' 
 
 ' How do I know ? I have been told that marriage 
 comes from love. They go to marry, therefore they 
 are in love.' 
 
 'That is quite different. These girls go and 
 marry out of love for God and not for man, because 
 through marriage they hope to further what they 
 think is God's religion, just as your nuns remain 
 unmarried for the same reason.' 
 
 'Do not speak of the nuns. I love them. But 
 these others ! It frightens me to think such things 
 are done and called religion.' 
 
 'And me. It frightens me too when you talk of 
 religion and love in the same breath. Go on to 
 another case.' 
 
 'The only other case on board is you.' 
 
 'And you.' 
 
 'Not me. You may leave me out. Let us con- 
 sider you. You tell me you are in love?' 
 
 'I do.' 
 
 'How can you tell that it will last ?' 
 Q
 
 226 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Because I know it.' 
 
 'That is no answer. Let it pass. It makes you 
 moody, dull, and solitary. Would love do that?' 
 
 'Why, certainly it would, for I am hungry and 
 athirst. You can't expect a starving man to laugh 
 and joke.' 
 
 ' You want to eat me ? ' 
 
 'Yes. I want to eat you/ 
 
 'I do not wish to be a food to such a cannibal. I 
 am not in love. I do not want at all to eat you.' 
 
 'You are in love. If you were not you would not 
 sit by me, you would not talk to me, you would not 
 look at me.' 
 
 'Oh yes, I would, from curiosity.' 
 
 ' You do not want to eat me. No ! But you will 
 like being eaten.' 
 
 'If wishing to be eaten is a sign of love, I have it 
 not. So much for love. I don't think much of it. 
 Let us go on to marriage.' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 'What is your idea of marriage ?' 
 
 'I have none.' 
 
 'That is what I complain of in you. You want 
 me to jump with you into an unknown sea. I have 
 observed some marriages. There is that of the 
 Grahams.' 
 
 'That was no marriage.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 227 
 
 'They fought, and now have separated.* 
 
 'That was no marriage, I say.' 
 
 'How can you tell what is and is not marriage? 
 If we married we might become as they are/ 
 
 'Never. Why don't you take a better case, the 
 Holmans ?' 
 
 'I think that an exception/ 
 
 'We shall be just as they are/ 
 
 She laughed again. 'How can you tell? It is a 
 gamble. Why should we gamble with our lives and 
 all our future ? Let us be certain first/ 
 
 The man laughed, but there was a bitterness in 
 it. 'I wonder were you asked before you were born 
 whether you would be born or not, and if you an- 
 swered " Stop ! I must know just what my life is to 
 be like before I want to be born." 
 
 'I would have done so if I could, no doubt/ 
 
 'And when you come to die will you object until 
 you know what there is after death?' 
 
 'It would not be any use. But what have life and 
 death to do with love and marriage?' 
 
 'This only, that they are all inevitable. No one 
 asks a reason about being born or dying, nor does he 
 about love. It is inevitable if it is true, and if not 
 true then not inevitable/ 
 
 'Then if that be true, and also that I love you, I 
 shall be made to marry you/
 
 228 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'You will.' 
 
 'I will not. I will use my judgment/ 
 
 'And it says?' 
 
 'There is no hurry, and see your way before you 
 jump. Shall we be friends and forget all this ?' 
 
 'I will not. No.' 
 
 'What! Not be friends?' 
 
 'Certainly not. Do you say to a hungry man, 
 "You may not eat this peach, but you may look at 
 it; you may note its colour, freshness, roundness, 
 and you may inhale its perfume. But you must 
 not eat." Do you say that?' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'Well, if you do, the hungry man replies that 
 he will not. He will go away from sight and sound 
 and perfume.' He rose. 
 
 She looked at him with sorrow. 'And in two days 
 we reach Bombay.' 
 
 'I wish it were to-morrow/ 
 
 'So to be rid of me ?' 
 
 'Yes/ 
 
 She rose. 'Good-bye,' she said; 'we can say it 
 now, and not wait till we arrive/ 
 
 'Good-bye/ 
 
 'When you can tell me what love is,' she said, 
 'return/ 
 
 'You ask of me the impossible/
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 229 
 
 'I ask of you to make me understand what love 
 and marriage is, that I may know if what you offer 
 me is good.' 
 
 He looked at her in silence. Then he went. 
 * Yet I will do the impossible,' he said, within himself. 
 
 'I ask him for the impossible,' she thought. 'Am 
 I a fool ? No ; for if he cannot make me love and 
 know it, then he does not love me. I will not marry 
 him unless I must, and he must make me/ 
 
 For two days they lived apart.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 'Dm you know/ said Mrs. Holman, 'that we 
 ran away to be married ?' 
 
 She laughed and looked at them. They sat at 
 tea upon the deck the Holmans, Warden, Holt, 
 the girl, the little Princess. Mrs. Graham was not 
 with them. She always kept apart now that her 
 husband had abandoned her. 
 
 'She ran away with me,' said Holman, nodding. 
 
 'You ran away with me,' retorted Mrs. Holman. 
 'You put me in the dog-cart by main force.' 
 
 'You made me do it.' 
 
 They all laughed. 
 
 'I thought,' said Warden, 'that Holman was your 
 guardian your only guardian.' 
 
 'So I was,' said Holman. 'She was my ward by 
 law. That was the cause of all the trouble. I could 
 not get away from her. Therefore she ran away 
 with me. I was quite helpless. So you men, be- 
 ware ! never be guardians.' 
 
 'But why run?' asked Warden. 'You were 
 
 230
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 231 
 
 her guardian; could you not marry her without 
 resorting to such a terrible expedient?' 
 
 'She made me,' answered Holman. 
 
 'I didn't,' said Mrs. Holman. 'He made me 
 run off with him because he was afraid.' 
 
 'Of whom?' 
 
 'Of a woman, of my schoolmistress, of Britannia. 
 He ran away from fear of her. And he a soldier ! ' 
 
 'I think,' said Holt, 'that you should tell us all, 
 now you have roused our curiosity.' 
 
 'I will,' said Mrs. Holman, 'and it will be a warn- 
 ing to both you girls.' 
 
 'More like to both you men,' said Holman. 
 
 'Most like to none of us,' said Warden. 'You 
 cannot hold yourselves up as awful examples of 
 the folly of mankind, but rather of its occasional 
 luck astounding luck and wisdom. Come, tell 
 us all.' 
 
 'Who shall begin?' asked Mrs. Holman. 
 
 'I will begin,' said Holman. 'I was once a 
 subaltern, happy, young, and free, like many are. 
 I had no relatives except a cousin, a man much 
 older than myself. I hardly remember him. He 
 was a great traveller always away in Central Asia 
 or in Africa. He had one daughter, Minnie, who 
 was brought up at school. He died in some out- 
 landish part, and when his will was opened it was
 
 232 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 found that I was appointed as her guardian. A 
 few months later I came home on furlough, and 
 went to see her at her school.' 
 
 'It was such fun!' said Mrs. Holman. 
 
 'For you, no doubt,' said Holman; 'but for me? 
 Well, it was different. I remembered her a child I 
 used to tease before I went to India, and somehow 
 I did not realise she had grown. I thought to find 
 a child again. I filled my pockets with sweets, and 
 went all unsuspecting into the lion's den. First I 
 was confronted with Britannia.' 
 
 'Who was Britannia ?' 
 
 'The schoolmistress. She was tall and stout, and 
 very dignified and proper.' 
 
 'She was a dear at heart,' said Mrs. Holman. 
 
 'Perhaps. I never saw her heart, only her ar- 
 mour and her front. What she expected I don't 
 know an aged general or a colonel. What she 
 found was a subaltern of twenty-seven. She dis- 
 approved profoundly; she was almost shocked. I 
 had some trouble to show her that there was no 
 mistake. When I had proved it to her, at last she 
 sent for Minnie.' 
 
 'It seemed a dreadful time to wait,' said Mrs. 
 Holman. 'I wondered what on earth you were 
 doing.' 
 
 'I went towards the door to meet the little girl,
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 233 
 
 to rumple up her hair and kiss her. The door 
 opened, and in walked a dignified young woman of 
 seventeen. I stopped.' 
 
 'You did look foolish, Harry. You just stared at 
 me/ 
 
 'No wonder; I was embarrassed. Any man 
 would be. You weren't.' 
 
 'No; why should I be ? Weren't you my cousin, 
 and didn't I remember you quite well ? You were 
 not changed at all.' 
 
 'You were, and I didn't recognise you at all; 
 you had grown up so much.' 
 
 'Do you know,' said Mrs. Holman to the others, 
 'that he never kissed me at all, only shook hands 
 as if I were a stranger ?' 
 
 'I did not dare.' 
 
 'You men have little courage. And then he 
 began talking to Britannia about what do you 
 suppose ? About my lessons, music, and dancing.' 
 
 'Highly proper in a guardian,' said Warden 
 approvingly. 
 
 'Great rubbish and impertinence I thought it 
 from a young subaltern. He even asked if I had 
 cooking lessons cooking lessons, mind you ! What 
 did he know of cooking ?' 
 
 'I often wished I did,' said Holman. 
 
 'I almost hated you,' said Mrs. Holman; 'but,
 
 234 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 after a time, Britannia let us go out into the garden 
 to make friends.' 
 
 'She was mollified by my behaviour/ said Holman. 
 
 'Mollified, indeed! However, we went out, and 
 gradually he thawed out of his guardian manners, 
 which he only put on because he, a soldier, was 
 afraid of a schoolmistress and a little girl. He got 
 quite jolly, and even gave me the sweets. Then we 
 fell in love with each other.' 
 
 'Excuse me/ said Holman; 'I did not fall in love 
 with you for ever so long after/ 
 
 'No matter/ said Mrs. Holman calmly. 'I fell 
 in love with you. That was the main point/ 
 
 'You hear, you bachelors/ said Holman, 'that 
 is the main point. You think you go about and 
 choose the girl you want. Oh, little you know, little 
 you know ! ' 
 
 'That was during term time/ said Mrs. Holman, 
 'and we only met twice more. During the Easter 
 holidays he came down again, and we met every 
 day for ten days. Britannia even let me go out 
 with him a few times. She liked you, Harry, 
 though you were so afraid of her/ 
 
 'May not a guardian take his ward out walking?' 
 
 'That depends on the size and age of wards and 
 guardians. I believe Britannia feared more the 
 look of the thing and what people would say than
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 235 
 
 that she thought it improper herself. She was a 
 good old thing, though overpowering.' 
 
 'At the end of the holidays we were already 
 engaged in a sort of way/ 
 
 'What is "a sort of way" ?' asked Warden vir- 
 tuously. 'A tacit, underhand agreement concealed 
 from the authority ? I am surprised and pained. A 
 guardian, too. What are the marks of such an 
 engagement ?' 
 
 ' "The marks" ?' asked Mrs. Holman. 
 
 'The outward signs and tokens.' 
 
 'Why do you want to know?' 
 
 'All knowledge is useful,' he replied. 
 
 'Never you mind,' she answered. 'Go and 
 find out for yourself if you want to know. Well, 
 Harry went away and left me, and I wasn't even 
 allowed to write to him without Britannia seeing 
 the letters. School seemed awfully dull.' 
 
 'What do you think she did?' asked Holman. 
 'She wrote me secretly to come and take her 
 away.' 
 
 'He was my guardian. Couldn't he take me to 
 another school if he thought right ?' she asked. 
 
 'It wasn't that at all,' said Holman scornfully. 
 
 'Of course it wasn't. I wanted to see him, and 
 I was afraid he would go back to India without 
 coming down again. Men are so casual. How-
 
 236 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 ever, he came down to see me. Then we decided 
 to run away.' 
 
 'I want to know,' said Warden reprovingly, 
 'why you could not have behaved properly and 
 openly and told Britannia.' 
 
 They both laughed. 'I would have liked to 
 see Harry tell Britannia he was going to marry 
 me. She would have sent for the police. Indeed 
 she would. Harry's being my guardian would 
 not have mattered to her at all. She said no self- 
 respecting girl should marry before twenty-three 
 at least. She would have shut me up on bread 
 and water. We talked it over and decided we 
 daren't tell her. So we decided to run away.' 
 
 'You mean you did,' said Holman. 
 
 'I mean both of us did; and oh,' she said, address- 
 ing the two girls, ' always be run away with if you 
 can. Don't make of love and marriage a business 
 and a weariness, a formality. It is romance; then 
 make it a romance. It will remind you always that 
 it was love that made you marry. It will be some- 
 thing to remember. We ran away one morning 
 early. It was midsummer, and the sun was shining 
 on the garden, the dew was on the roses, the birds 
 were singing. It was a morning made to run away 
 in. I never shall forget it when I came out of 
 the garden door into that bright world the fresh-
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 237 
 
 ness and the glory of it all.' She stopped and smiled. 
 Her thoughts went back with gladness to that begin- 
 ning of their married life. It seemed as if there 
 came from that dawn a light that shone on all their 
 days together. She was in a dream. 
 
 'And yet,' said Holman, 'at the end you stopped. 
 You would not come. Do you remember ? I had 
 to lift you up.' 
 
 She did not answer. Yes, she remembered. 
 He stood beside the mare's head and she ran up 
 towards him. Then suddenly she stopped. A 
 fear came into her, an understanding of what it 
 meant that she was doing, giving him all her life. 
 She stopped two paces from him. She would 
 have gone to him but could not. She would have 
 
 o 
 
 turned and run away but could not. She stood 
 and stared at him. 
 
 'Get up,' he said; 'get up into the dog-cart.' 
 
 She did not move. 
 
 'Minnie,' he said, 'make haste; we shall be 
 seen. Get up.' She did not move but swayed a 
 little, and her eyes were full of fear and of entreaty. 
 She could not come but he must take her, and he 
 understood. He left the horse's head and went to 
 her. He kissed her and felt her tremble. Then he 
 put his arms about her and lifted her into the dog- 
 cart. The mare stood quiet, wondering no doubt
 
 238 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 what all this meant. Perhaps an understanding 
 was in her and she stood still. Did they remember ? 
 Yes. Who would forget ? 
 
 'We drove away,' said Mrs. Holman, 'into the 
 most perfect morning that ever shone. The lanes 
 were all deserted. There was May yet in the 
 hedges, and the air was sweet and pure and full of 
 the scent of hay. We ran away/ 
 
 They ran away together and they never did 
 come back, nor did their going on together ever 
 cease. They would go on till dawn and day was 
 passed and night was come together. They 
 would go through the darkness till they came to 
 other greater dawns. 
 
 There was a silence, for the charm of things 
 untold, yet understood, was entered into all who 
 heard. There was a silence. In the heavens the 
 mellow light of afternoon made a magnificence, the 
 sea lay in a drowse of indolence; its waves were 
 sighs of happiness and dreams. 
 
 'You had good fortune. You made marriage a 
 romance/ said Holt. 
 
 'And so it should be, so it is when love is in it. 
 And for the rest/ she said, 'I think that love is 
 always much the same. It has its ways. I made 
 him run away with me, and he ran off with me 
 against my will/
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 239 
 
 And Holt remembered the Professor and the 
 book. 'Read it and disbelieve,' said the Pro- 
 fessor. He had read it; what had he to disbelieve? 
 That love is all on one side on the man's; that 
 women have no part, no choice, but are unwilling 
 victims to the force of men ? Yes, that was what 
 there was to disbelieve. Men force women by their 
 strength, women force men by their weakness. 
 Which is most strong, the weakness or the strength ? 
 Man loves woman and woman loves man; which is 
 the greater love ? There is no lesser nor no greater. 
 They are different, and together they make up a 
 whole. Love is not a thing, nor is it a quality. 
 Love is a relation of a man and woman to each other; 
 it is action and reaction. Man loves woman, he 
 would not have that love returned in the same form 
 he gave it. Woman loves man, she would not have 
 him love her as she loves him. Love is a question 
 and an answer, each calls, each answers. 
 
 'She asks me "What is love?" I feel it and I 
 know it; how can I make her know? She loves 
 me; did she not do so I could not love her. She 
 loves me but she does not know it. How can I 
 make her know that she loves me ?' 
 
 Yet still he did not understand. It is a woman's 
 privilege, her honour, and her nature, that should 
 be carried off. The last move in the game is man's,
 
 2 4 o ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 and it is * check,' nay more than 'check' -it is 
 'checkmate.' But he must give it to her desire. 
 He must show his strength. Love rises to the 
 heavens but it is based upon the earth, on deeds 
 not words.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 IN these last days the little Princess and the girl 
 were much together. Their lovers had abandoned 
 them, or they had sent away their lovers. Warden 
 and Holt had made a place on the poop-deck where 
 they kept to themselves. Othello and Hamlet 
 were inseparable. As they had been fierce 
 enemies so now they were become fast friends, 
 while the bone of their contention was forgotten. 
 Perhaps they were ashamed, not because they had 
 fought, but because of the futility of the reason. 
 For there are things to fight about and things not 
 to fight about; there are women who may be rightly 
 fought about, and women about whom a man has no 
 right to fight. 
 
 To defend a woman of one's family, a wife, 
 a sister, daughter, a man should fight if that be the 
 only way. But for two men to quarrel about a girl 
 they think they love, and fight for her possession, 
 is absurd, even did her possession go to the victor. 
 To fight about a girl that neither loves is sheerest 
 folly. 
 
 And neither loved her; they knew that now. 
 
 R 241
 
 242 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Romance had fled. In Europe the Indian girl 
 might be a princess; she was unknown, out of an 
 unknown world that held most wonderful things. 
 She was exotic, strange, like some dark tropic fruit. 
 Here in the East her rareness fled. She was a sister 
 or a cousin of the dark-skinned peoples seen at Port 
 Said and at Aden. She was a daughter of the East 
 this world of burning suns, of heat, of thirst, of 
 weariness, of sand, of dust, of poverty. This world 
 revolted them and made them fear. It is a fear that 
 comes to Europeans in the East, the fear of being 
 swallowed up in the great Eastern sea. It is so 
 great, so strong, that to preserve ourselves we shrink 
 from it, we push it from us, and we hate it. Those 
 who have conquered hate, have loved again and 
 learned to understand it they are few. 
 
 Othello and Hamlet first were drawn towards 
 the Indian girl by their desire for newness, for 
 romance, which they endowed her with; they 
 shrank from her now, because instinctive fear of 
 Eastern things made them attribute to her defects 
 that she had not. Therefore they shunned her. 
 
 She hardly noticed. She in her turn forgot them, 
 for the East had claimed her back. 
 
 'I thought,' she said one day, 'that I was happy 
 when in Europe. I thought I liked your skies, 
 your cold, your greyness. I thought I liked the
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 243 
 
 strength, the vigour that it gives. I got accustomed 
 to it/ 
 
 'And now?' Miss Ormond asked. 
 
 'And now I know I did not. I love this sun, 
 this warmth, these airs that touch me softly like a 
 message from my home. I love this laziness, not 
 to be always wanting to be doing something, not 
 to be restless, active, and unhappy. Life is "to 
 be" and not only "to do" or "suffer"; life is to 
 rest, and feel the tide of life pass slowly by; to float 
 upon the surface of time's tide rocked by the hours, 
 which are its waves. I am a lotus-eater,' and she 
 laughed. 
 
 'You regret nothing?' asked the girl; 'the civili- 
 sation, the manners, the luxury, the freedom, the 
 people. Is there nothing you have left behind that 
 you will not regret, will not wish to have brought 
 with you ? ' 
 
 'I think,' the little Princess answered reflec- 
 tively, 'that there is nothing. Do not mistake me. 
 I have spent three fruitful years in Europe; I have 
 made friends whom I shall always have in pleasant 
 remembrance; I have learnt things which I shall 
 not forget. And do not think I do not admire much 
 that I have seen; that I do not acknowledge you 
 have much which we have not. I found it hard to 
 come away; I almost thought that I could never
 
 244 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 again be happy in the East. But now it is all dif- 
 ferent. I feel the East has come about me, and I 
 love her as a child does her mother. I may admire 
 the West; I love the East, my home. I had for- 
 gotten her, now she has taken me again/ 
 
 'I think,' returned the girl, 'I understand, and 
 that even if I learned to know your East, the West 
 would still be home, and all that it did be good.' 
 
 'Yes; all that the East does is good to me. When 
 I was in your West I doubted. I saw your women 
 free, and with life open to them. I saw the girls 
 free to choose their husbands, free to take or to re- 
 ject. I saw them marry when they like, or not 
 marry; all seemed good. I wished we too were as 
 you are. But now that the East has taken me again 
 I doubt.' 
 
 'What do you doubt ?' 
 
 'That, taken all in all, your customs are more 
 happy than ours are; that they would suit us could 
 we take them. You have your truths, and we have 
 ours. We look on marriage differently from you; 
 our families are different. You think yours better, 
 we think ours.' 
 
 'You are all married as children, aren't you, by 
 your parents; you have no choice, you cannot know 
 if you will love or hate ; you cast love from out your 
 lives by that ? '
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 245 
 
 'What you call love we have another name for,' 
 answered the little Princess. 'We do not honour 
 it as you. We are afraid of it. Love is a storm, a 
 passion of the heart, and it makes shipwrecks oftener 
 than it drives into a harbour. It is a lightning of 
 the sky; it comes and goes, no one can tell from 
 whence or where. It strikes and kills. It does not 
 light nor warm. You worship love, we honour 
 marriage/ 
 
 'And what is marriage?' asked the girl. 'Is it 
 not the goal of love ? Is it not the end to which love 
 drives ? ' 
 
 'That is what you say; but we say that mar- 
 riage is the opposite of love, such love as that you 
 speak of. The love in marriage does not suddenly 
 flash out and die; it is a fire that is built upon the 
 hearth, and grows by care and feeding. It gives 
 light and warmth; it does not sear nor hurt. It is 
 the union of two hearts, two souls to gain an immor- 
 tality. It includes reason, will, and self-control. 
 Love is abandonment/ 
 
 'To what ? Some say abandonment to the will of 
 God who gives it/ 
 
 'Or to the devil, who may send it in his ends ?' 
 
 The girl laughed. 'And which is true? Is love 
 a god or devil ?' 
 
 The little Princess shook her head. 'How should
 
 246 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 I know ? Perhaps it's sometimes the one, some- 
 times the other. I am not a sage, I cannot answer, 
 nor do I know where Truth is always. I tell you 
 what we think of these things in India. Maybe 
 we have the half of truth and you the other half. 
 We mortals never see truth whole/ 
 
 'Tell me your side of truth that I may know it,' 
 asked the girl. 
 
 The little Princess smiled. 'We are two girls/ 
 she said. 'We neither of us know what love and 
 marriage is, nor can do till we love and marry. 
 Why do we talk of it ?' 
 
 'But surely we can know something. We need 
 not go all blindly into the future, need we ? ' 
 
 'We can know what others tell us, that is all; 
 whether they tell us truly we have no means to 
 judge. But I will tell you what my people say. 
 They say that the Western people have no idea 
 what marriage is nor family. 
 
 'Marriage is an union, a growing together. It 
 cannot begin too soon. For man and woman to be 
 one in thought and soul, they must have been brought 
 up together as children; their minds and thoughts 
 and souls must have developed in company. A 
 man and woman brought up as strangers never 
 learn completely to pull together, to think together, 
 never learn each other's powers or limitations, are
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 247 
 
 never in full sympathy. The truest marriage begins 
 in infancy.' 
 
 'But,' said the girl, 'to take two children and 
 marry them before they are big enough to have 
 developed their likes and their dislikes is to run 
 the chance that they will grow up to dislike each 
 other.' 
 
 'It may happen so sometimes, for nothing is per- 
 fect, but it is not common. If parents like each 
 other, so will their children. And then the growing 
 up together prevents the rise of differences. They 
 accept each other as husband and wife, just as chil- 
 dren accept their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. 
 There is a warm and close affection, and a habit of 
 mind quite different from what you call love. It is 
 not so much the tie of blood that links brother to 
 sister as a childhood spent together. So is it with 
 infant marriages.' 
 
 'But brothers and sisters often do not love each 
 other.' 
 
 'With you they don't, with us they do. There is 
 a whole world between the family as you know it 
 and as we do. We think that you have no idea of 
 family or of married life. Your sons go out into the 
 world. They leave their homes, their parents, with 
 pleasure. They come to India, and perhaps they 
 never see their parents again. They do not mind.
 
 248 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Your girls come out and marry. Their first idea is 
 to get husbands, and their family count as little. 
 
 'You marry often in haste, from "love," and then 
 in India, at least, your life together ceases in a few 
 years. The wives go home, the men stay out. Chil- 
 dren grow up without their parents. Even in Eng- 
 land the boys are sent to schools, and so grow up 
 away from their father's influence and knowledge. 
 We could not do these things. The family is to us 
 a sacred thing, it holds together always. Our wives 
 so love their husbands that they do not desire the 
 outer world and the company of other men as your 
 women do. Their husband is to them enough, 
 through him they touch the world. Men are the 
 rough and harsh and stronger things of life; women 
 are the secret, tender things. Men are the rind, 
 women are the sweet and hidden fruit that holds the 
 seeds. You think it is men's force and jealousy that 
 keeps the Indian women hidden, it is their own 
 desire. Our women used to burn themselves upon 
 their husband's pyre. Many would do so now were 
 it allowed. Our system has its faults, it has its 
 virtues, so has yours. Marriage with us is greater 
 than it is with you.' 
 
 * But it has no romance. It kills free-will and 
 choice. It makes of marriage the inevitable; no 
 one is master of his fate.'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 249 
 
 'No one is master of his fate, neither with you 
 nor us,' replied the little Princess, 'and to gain one 
 truth more fully, you must sacrifice another. You 
 cannot have both sides at once. I thought in Europe 
 that your side was better, I think in India that our 
 side is. You exalt love, we marriage; which is the 
 greater truth ?' 
 
 Which is the greater truth ? Both truths are 
 true, and as no nation can keep both at once, is it 
 not well that each should have and keep its own, 
 else it might perish from the earth ? To every 
 individual in this world, to every nation, and to 
 every continent, there is a separate truth, and all 
 together make the Truth of all Humanity. 
 
 Yet, thought the girl, if that be true, then love 
 is enemy to marriage. The perfect marriage must 
 begin with life, yet does not end with it. The 
 cult of love alone would sometimes render mar- 
 riage impossible. They are the opposites of one 
 another, the complement. As North to South, as 
 hot to cold, they contradict, and yet you cannot 
 have a north without a south, a heat without a 
 coldness. Life is an oscillation always between 
 two extremes, love which is free and marriage 
 which is a bond. Marriage is the death of love, 
 and its denial. It is love's consummation, and 
 love dies. Yet love leads to marriage, is the only
 
 250 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 road that is always true, and marriage leads to love 
 - not the same love. 
 
 'How shall I ever know the truth?' she thought. 
 'For it is contradiction upon contradiction.' 
 
 Out of her questionings she came back to present 
 things. 
 
 'If that be so,' she asked, 'if marriage must 
 begin with childhood with your people, what will 
 you do? You are not married?' She smiled 
 with sympathy into the girl's dark face. 'But, 
 forgive me, I should not say such things nor ask 
 such questions.' 
 
 'I do not mind,' she answered. 'You ask what 
 I shall do ? I do not know. Fate will direct and 
 tell me. I do not wish to marry now. It is too 
 late. Yet it is hard to live alone. In India as in 
 England unmarried women have no organisations 
 of their own. Fate will decide.' 
 
 'Does Fate tell one true?' 
 
 'Fate is the only Power that tells the truth to 
 us so that we understand. Fate, as we call what 
 you call Providence. In all the greatest things of 
 life it is the only guide. Do what you must.' 
 
 'Not what you wish ?' 
 
 'They are the same. When Fate resolves that 
 you shall do a thing she makes you will it, makes 
 you desire it, so commands your heart you cannot
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 251 
 
 help it. Only your wish must come into your heart, 
 not head. "The head denies, the heart affirms." 
 
 To the girl, sitting all alone at night looking 
 across the sea, it seemed that she got always the 
 same answer. To understand, to comprehend, is 
 never of the mind. It is the function of the intellect, 
 of thought, always to deny, to sift, to see the false- 
 hood and the foolishness of things. Everything is 
 false seen by the mind, for to everything there is the 
 false side and the true; the mind sees but the first. 
 The mind will anchor you in everlasting doubt; and 
 so it should do till the truth seen by the heart grows 
 strong, so strong that nothing can withstand it. 
 That is mind's function. 
 
 *I asked him what was love; he could not answer 
 me. I asked him what was marriage, and he had no 
 words. And yet he loves me and would marry me. 
 He could not answer, for these things are felt not told. 
 That I may know what love is, I must love; that I 
 may know what marriage is, then I must marry.' 
 
 She stared across the dark. 
 
 The night was on the sea, the Indian night. 
 The waves went past in rhythmic dance, their crests 
 flashed fire. The stars stood forth against the 
 sky so clear, so large, with such a brilliancy they 
 made a lustre in the darkness, and it shone like 
 some great dusky pearl. Sometimes a streak of
 
 252 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 light flashed from the heavens with a message to 
 the earth. 
 
 On the breeze was borne the faintest odour of 
 the land, of palms, of flowers, of sun-baked plains 
 and steamy uplands, of scent and spices thrown 
 abroad. 
 
 The night was full of passion. It called, it 
 called. It said: 'Be one with us and with all life. 
 Love is the king that rules the world. It holds the 
 seas together, and it draws the rivers to them. 
 Every flower and fruit is born of love; it is the spirit 
 that goes forth and lives upon the world and makes 
 it live. It holds the rocks together and the hills; 
 its passions move the winds.' 
 
 She heard, she felt, she understood. 
 
 She knew at last it is the mind that seeks, the 
 heart that always finds. 
 
 Her heart had found, and she would let it lead 
 her. She could not help but go where it com- 
 manded. So was the struggle past and peace was 
 come.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 AND so they came to their last day on board. 
 
 'To-morrow we shall land,' said Warden. 'The 
 Captain says we shall sight the harbour light soon 
 after midnight, and be in at dawn. Our voyage 
 is almost over/ 
 
 'I did not think I should be sorry,* said Mrs. 
 Holman, 'but I am. Our voyage is over; by to- 
 morrow it will have become "portion and parcel 
 of the dreadful past," and yet it will not. Nothing 
 is ever really past, and nothing goes completely 
 to the limbo of forgotten things. We are made up 
 of all our past, and take it with us. We are all 
 summaries of all that we have seen and done and 
 felt. The past is never passed, the future never 
 vacant; for past and present and future are all one.' 
 
 'We may forget,' said Warden, 'but the effect 
 remains. I have learnt things. I may forget them, 
 but they will not leave me. They will be part of 
 me.' 
 
 'As they are for us all. Where will we all be 
 in a week ? Scattered upon a continent. I shall
 
 254 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 be sorry to say good-bye. The nuns, I never 
 shall forget them. They have taught me things.' 
 
 'What things ?' 
 
 'Things that are good to keep by one. They 
 have made me to remember that in man's world 
 women have their part if they will see it. The 
 half is ours if we will take it. We have a truth, 
 one of our own, which we can keep, and which 
 the world will be glad of. But we forget it. Yet 
 even in marriage we should never do so. For 
 marriage is of woman and of man. And if the 
 man forget to be a man, the woman to be a woman, 
 marriage is dead. It takes two opposites to make 
 a whole. Yet we forget, because we say that woman 
 has no truth in herself alone. She must be part of 
 man/ 
 
 'And man of woman ?' 
 
 'Yes; but it is not true/ 
 
 'It is not true,' said Warden. 'We have our 
 truth that women never know/ 
 
 'Your truth is in the State, ours should be in 
 the Church. The faith of Christ is woman's faith, 
 the love of Christ is woman's love; we have forgot 
 it. We are forgetting now that we are women/ 
 
 'And we ?' asked Warden. 
 
 'Yours is the State, ours is the Church that is 
 the Man and Wife of Nations/
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 255 
 
 'Truly,' said Warden, 'we forget it. But,' he 
 continued, 'you would not have women turn nuns 
 nowadays, shut themselves up, make themselves 
 subject to priests, abjure the world ? ' 
 
 'That,' she replied, 'is but the form, and the 
 form should vary according to the time, the people, 
 and the circumstances. What I mean is, that just 
 as men have other futures beside marriage, other 
 ties, other companionship, other loves, other duties 
 to the State, so should women have. And I mean 
 that as every community that lives together happily 
 is cemented by a love, a sentiment, and not mere 
 self-interest as, for instance, men are bound into 
 regiments by love of their country, which is a re- 
 ligion so if women are to have societies to culti- 
 vate their own virtues they must be cemented together 
 by a sentiment. There are always more women 
 than men, and they cannot live alone. In Eastern 
 countries the escape is polygamy, which is their only 
 refuge. It is really a woman's institution, not a 
 man's. It enables her, if not to have a husband to 
 herself, at least to have a child. In Catholic countries 
 there are the sisterhoods. They are mediaeval in 
 form, but still they are something. Only in Prot- 
 estant countries there is nothing. A girl must 
 marry, or be a lonely spinster. A woman in her- 
 self is no one; womanhood of itself has no honour.
 
 256 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 Women have no influence, save the married ones 
 through their husbands. Therefore in Catholic 
 countries women hold, and have always held, a 
 much stronger position than in Protestant countries, 
 because they knew and were helped how to be 
 women. And our future lies in being women more 
 and more; not in aping men far off, but in cultivating 
 our own virtues and making them a power in the 
 State; not in merging ourselves with men, but in 
 differentiating ourselves.' 
 
 'It would be a dreary world,' said Warden, 'where 
 women were all trying to be men in petticoats.' 
 
 'They have begun to shed even the petticoats 
 now. But that, of course, you cannot know.' Then 
 they both laughed. 
 
 ' And I am sorry,' she went on, ( to leave you 
 all. To-morrow we shall have parted. You go, 
 and Mr. Holt, the little Princess, Mrs. Graham. 
 Who knows where Mrs. Graham will go, or whether 
 she and her husband will ever meet again ! Even 
 Othello and Hamlet I am sad to say farewell to.' 
 
 'They now have other names,' said Warden, 
 'for they have ceased to justify the old ones. They 
 make love no more, nor are they jealous.' 
 
 'What do you call them?' 
 
 'Damon and Pythias, for they are inseparable. 
 The Indian girl no longer is a princess. The East
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 257 
 
 has robbed her of her royalty. She is called 
 Luxmi/ 
 
 'And I?' 
 
 'You have not changed, nor ever will. Holman 
 is Darby, you are Joan, to everlasting.' She smiled 
 at him. 
 
 'I have two other names/ 
 
 ' For whom ? ' 
 
 'For Holt and for the girl. She is no more "the 
 girl" to me, for she is lost/ 
 
 'What are they now?' 
 
 'Their names are Salami and Zulamith. You 
 know the legend/ 
 
 'I have forgotten it/ 
 
 'They loved on earth, but did not know they 
 loved. They would not listen to their hearts. 
 They thought that they were wise, and so they 
 lived apart; at last they died. Their souls went 
 up to Heaven, and they were placed with all the sky 
 between them/ 
 
 'That was not happy/ 
 
 'They were unhappy, for they realised at last 
 they were in love, and each looked to see where the 
 other was. They saw each other with all the sky 
 between them. They could not bear it/ 
 
 'What did they do/ 
 
 'They built themselves a bridge of stars across
 
 258 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 the sky, and met at last to make a burning sun. 
 The bridge is still across the sky. They call it 
 now the Milky Way/ 
 
 'I wonder,' said Mrs. Holman, 'will they build 
 that bridge, or will they live as they are doing now, 
 with all a heaven between them ?' 
 
 'They will not/ said Warden. 'They need 
 build no bridge. Is not the old one still across 
 the sky ? Once built it lasts for ever. They will 
 find it/ 
 
 'Yes, they will/ said Mrs. Holman. 
 
 That night they held a concert on the ship to say 
 good-bye. They sang. Into their songs they put 
 their sorrow; for all were sorry. They had grown 
 together, all to like and know each other. They 
 would part, but each would take within his heart 
 more than a memory, something real to be for ever 
 part of himself. 
 
 The music passed across the sea and mingled 
 with the murmurs of the waves. 
 
 The music died away. They sat a little looking 
 at the night, and then the decks began to empty. 
 Slowly they went, till all were gone but one. The 
 lights went out, the chairs were piled upon the grat- 
 ings. There was a solitude. The only sounds 
 were from the engines beating and the surge of seas 
 upon the sides. But these had so grown into the
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 259 
 
 consciousness that they were now unheard. There 
 seemed an utter silence, a solitude that stretched up 
 to the stars, that touched the waves, an utter lone- 
 liness. 
 
 He looked across the sea. He wondered was 
 there anywhere in space a God of love who listened 
 and would help ? Was all the universe abandoned 
 to the soulless streams of force ? Were all the 
 gods then dead, and was there nowhere any love 
 within the universe ? 
 
 'If anywhere there be a soul,' he cried, 'a Soul 
 who lives, a Soul that is called Love, then listen. 
 Come near and help me.' 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 Yes, there was a voice, not from without, not 
 from the stars or from infinite space. There was 
 an echo in his heart. It answered : ' I am here 
 here in thy heart. What seekest thou ? My son, 
 what seekest thou ? ' 
 
 'I look for words,' he answered. 
 
 'What words?' 
 
 'To tell her what is love and marriage, so that 
 she may understand.' 
 
 The waves that passed picked up his answer and 
 they laughed; they turned their heads, they raced, 
 they flung it to the air in high derision, rushing 
 on their way to ocean playgrounds. The winds
 
 2 6o ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 heard as they passed from continent to continent, 
 and murmured to each other in soft scorn, 'He 
 looks for words, for words.' The stars set in their 
 courses winked all their wicked diamond eyes in 
 merriment. 'For words, for words. Thou fool, to 
 think to build an immortality with words on words ! ' 
 
 The laughter hurt him. * What then,' he asked, 
 ' if not with words ? ' 
 
 'With deeds,' it said; 'with deeds upon this earth/ 
 
 'Love is a spirit,' he replied, 'and what have 
 deeds such as are possible to us to do with spirits ? 
 Deeds are of the body/ 
 
 'Love is a spirit,' was the answer, 'but it is in- 
 carnated in flesh, and thou canst reach it only by 
 the flesh. Love grows to Heaven, but its roots 
 are in the earth. And dost thou think to found 
 a temple to a god on words, on mind, on thought ? 
 Not so/ 
 
 'My reason tells me,' he replied. His words 
 died in the laughter of an universe. It rang through 
 all the worlds and beat upon the bounds of time. 
 Even the winds and echoes laughed, for they heard 
 of what was emptier than they were. 
 
 'Wilt thou then listen,' said the voice, 'to Reason 
 or to me ? What has Reason told thee ever ? Did 
 it make thee live, or love, and can it save thee from 
 the death?'
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 261 
 
 'Canst thou?' 
 
 'I can. For life and love are mine; Death is my 
 servant/ 
 
 'Then speak on; I listen.' 
 
 'Rise up.' 
 
 He rose. 'Go forward,' said the voice. He 
 went, as men go in a dream. He stood by the 
 companion. 'Now send thy soul to call her, for 
 she waits.' 
 
 He sent his soul and stood bereft of life. A 
 footstep on the stair, a white form rising in the 
 dusk. She came, she came. She brought his soul 
 back to him. 
 
 He put his arm about her, and they passed into 
 the shadow. 
 
 'You asked me "What is Love?'" he whispered. 
 'It is this and this. You asked me "What is Mar- 
 riage?" It is this. Lip unto lip, and heart to heart, 
 and soul to soul for ever.' 
 
 'Love is the angel with the golden key that opens 
 gates of Immortality. His seal is this.' 
 
 They sat together, and the sky, the sea, the night 
 made solitude about them. 'Why did you come?' 
 he asked. 
 
 'You called me/ 
 
 'Yes, I called you/
 
 2 6z ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'Why did not you call before ? I waited listening, 
 but your call came not. I would have come to you, 
 but that you did not make me. You were so long, 
 so long.' 
 
 'You hid from me/ 
 
 'I was afraid, and I was strong. You would 
 not have me listen to each breath that calls. I 
 waited till you called so strongly I must come.' 
 
 'You were afraid/ 
 
 'I am not/ 
 
 'I called at last/ 
 
 'I made you call. It was my voice within you 
 making you force me/ 
 
 'You thought that you would lose yourself?' 
 
 'And I know now that I have found myself/ 
 
 'I thought to give, yet I have gained/ 
 
 'We both have gained an Immortality/ 
 
 'Was ever world so beautiful ? Look at the 
 dawn that silvers in the east. The seas grow 
 purple/ 
 
 'A little cloud that hung all cold and grey is 
 flushing into golden life. The sun's warm kisses 
 make it blush. It is turned crimson. See now, 
 the dark has gone, the world is wide, and it is ours. 
 No time shall make us old, nor can death touch us. 
 Love grows greater till it reaches Heaven/
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 263 
 
 'It has reached Heaven; in Heaven it came to 
 us.' 
 
 'High Heaven is in our hearts our hearts.' 
 
 ' Our heart, for we have one. One life, one death, 
 one Immortality.' 
 
 Then the sun rose.
 
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 The Origin and Development 
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