K.f. 
 
 So"- 
 
 1 4 Z.'Z*
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 ONE 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 BY 
 
 H. FIELDING HALL 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' THE INWARD LIGHT,' ETC. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1909
 
 Copyright in the United States of America, 1909 
 
 First Edition January 1909 
 Reprinted February and April 1909
 
 Stack 
 Bnnex 
 
 BOOK I 
 THE WEST
 
 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 
 expression 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 
 
 3
 
 4 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 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
 
 CHAP, i ONE IMMORTALITY 5 
 
 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 ; 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 
 ambassadors 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 understand 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.
 
 6 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 
 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.' 
 
 7
 
 8 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 ' Nor I. And yet you seem familiar. You 
 talk, you laugh like some one I have known. I 
 know 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. Mean- 
 while,' 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
 
 CHAP, ii ONE IMMORTALITY 9 
 
 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. 
 
 ' 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 
 restaurant 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. Holnian. 
 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
 
 io ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 
 colonnade, and saw the ship come in.' 
 
 ' You should have been with us,' he answered ; 
 ' we saw the city under the sunset, you saw but 
 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.'
 
 CHAP, it ONE IMMORTALITY 11 
 
 ' Yes,' he said. ' Yes, our dreams have all 
 awakenings. 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 
 serenade us ? ' 
 
 * She serenades the arrival of the ship, and as it 
 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
 
 12 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 the unstable 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 
 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.
 
 CHAP, ii ONE IMMORTALITY 13 
 
 This is the beginning. The ships are not Vene- 
 tian ; 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 resurrec- 
 tion ? 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 
 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.' 
 
 ' We have our benefit, too, in other ways,' she
 
 i 4 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 
 coasts, the lands, and we can count the days and 
 hours. There is nothing for us to find.' 
 
 c 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. 
 
 * Amitie ! '
 
 CHAP, ii ONE IMMORTALITY 15 
 
 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- 
 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 
 unhearable. In other cities there is always an 
 undertone of sound, of horses beating on the 
 
 16
 
 CHAP, in ONE IMMORTALITY 17 
 
 stones, of rattling carriages, the harsh tramp of 
 feet that tread and never rest. There is the mur- 
 mur of the human sea that never wholly sleeps, 
 there is an echo of unrest 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 suddenly he came back from his dream and he 
 remembered. 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 
 beside 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 
 
 c
 
 1 8 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 
 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
 
 CHAP, in ONE IMMORTALITY 19 
 
 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. 
 
 ' 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 
 understand. 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
 
 20 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK , 
 
 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 
 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 
 herself 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.
 
 CHAP, in ONE IMMORTALITY 21 
 
 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.' 
 
 ' 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
 
 22 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 and thought is free. But they are hidden in 
 labyrinths, and no man reaches them alone. 
 
 They came to the Rial to 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 
 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
 
 CHAP, in ONE IMMORTALITY 23 
 
 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. 
 
 * 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 
 Renaissance." It was indeed a new birth. The 
 world grows old and dies and then is born again,
 
 24 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 ' 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.'
 
 CHAP, in UINfc 1MMUK1AJL11I 25 
 
 ' 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 it 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 ? ' 
 
 1 Beyond the river, on the other side.' 
 
 * Beyond death ? * 
 
 ' Yes, on the other side of death. They saw 
 that other side maybe. We do not.' 
 
 1 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
 
 26 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 accompani- 
 ment. 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 
 sympathy. He felt that he returned to her some- 
 thing of the trouble she had given to him, that she 
 held something that was his, some of his thought 
 had 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
 
 CHAP, in ONE IMMORTALITY 27 
 
 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 caf6s 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 
 
 28
 
 ONE IMMORTALITY 29 
 
 on the marble flags made a continuous murmur, 
 slow and pleasant, quite unlike the purposed 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 inter- 
 necine war. 
 
 And there are others who declare that soul and 
 body are one thing, you cannot have the one 
 without 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
 
 3 o ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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. 
 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 
 expression 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
 
 CHAP, iv ONE IMMORTALITY 31 
 
 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, 
 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
 
 32 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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. Inno- 
 cence 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 
 instincts 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.
 
 CHAP, iv ONE IMMORTALITY 33 
 
 ' 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 
 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 
 
 p
 
 34 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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. 
 
 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 watching 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
 
 CHAP, iv ONE IMMORTALITY 35 
 
 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.' 
 
 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
 
 36 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 
 return. 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 
 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 
 languor, 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
 
 CHAP, iv ONE IMMORTALITY 37 
 
 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 
 remember that to-morrow we must sail,' said 
 Mrs. Holman. * 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 cam- 
 panile, while Warden followed the others to call 
 them back. Both were silent. It seemed the 
 prose of life had come into their pleasure. 
 
 ' I have not asked you,' said Mrs. Holman 
 suddenly, ' 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.'
 
 38 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK 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 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 haloes, 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 
 
 39
 
 40 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 read a number of them. A few were names of 
 men, but most were women's names. 
 
 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 forgetful- 
 ness 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 con- 
 queror, 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 Jove. 
 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?
 
 CHAP, v ONE IMMORTALITY 41 
 
 The waters down below the bridge were still 
 and dark. He could not see into them, they but 
 give back reflection of the bridge, the sky, him- 
 self. 
 
 In the piazza the pigeons preened and strutted. 
 Hardly would they move to let the passers-by 
 go 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.
 
 42 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 The red light of the match tinged the walls as 
 if with blood, and it went out. Darkness re- 
 turned. 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. 
 
 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
 
 CHAP, v ONE IMMORTALITY 43 
 
 despair. Life is always balanced. If the pen- 
 dulum 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 com- 
 plementary one to the other. One could not have 
 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
 
 44 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 think. Most men have passed it some time or 
 another, 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 merciful, 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 
 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
 
 CHAP, v ONE IMMORTALITY 45 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 universal peace ; we say that in the whole exist- 
 ence 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 v/as glad to leave it, glad to cross the 
 bridge again and come before the art that glows
 
 46 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 
 suddenly, 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.' 
 
 47
 
 48 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 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. 
 
 ' 1 ask you questions, but you do not answer.' 
 
 'You ask me questions and I do not answer, 
 because your questions are not questions.' 
 
 4 What are they ? ' 
 
 ' They are assertions. You do not ask because
 
 CHAP, vi ONE IMMORTALITY 49 
 
 you want to know, but because you want me to 
 know something.' 
 
 ' How do you mean ? If I do so it is not 
 consciously.' 
 
 ' You asked me why I answered you when you 
 sailed in ; you knew I did not know, you knew I 
 could not tell you. You only asked because you 
 wished me to remember I had done so and to 
 wonder 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 
 answered 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.' 
 
 E
 
 50 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 ' 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 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 
 defending himself by echoing her accusation. 
 
 And yet he knew that it was true. He had 
 been content before with what he knew of life
 
 CHAP, vi ONE IMMORTALITY 51 
 
 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 
 ornaments 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. Therefore he tried to know more of the one 
 and other. 
 
 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.
 
 52 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 
 understand ? 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. There- 
 fore they do not care for such art, they are afraid 
 of it. They wonder 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.
 
 CHAP, vi ONE IMMORTALITY 53 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 ' 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.
 
 54 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 * 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, 
 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 battle-
 
 CHAP, vi ONE IMMORTALITY 55 
 
 fields 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 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
 
 56 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 written thing can ever equal life. It should not, 
 for why attempt the impossible and the unne- 
 cessary ? Art has its message different from 
 ordinary life.' 
 
 c 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 soldier 
 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 great works of ancient art we so admire 
 to-day appeared so great to those who saw them
 
 CHAP, vi ONE IMMORTALITY 57 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 4 1 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 garment 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
 
 5 8 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 in danger of developing something of a mental 
 squint ? ' 
 
 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 paintings 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 
 
 4 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 
 
 59
 
 6o ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 after. They come into our lives when first they 
 mount the gangway. For a month they may 
 mean 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 sometimes whose thread will 
 get so firmly twisted into yours upon that voy- 
 age 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
 
 CHAP, vii ONE IMMORTALITY 61 
 
 how Indian life levels all differences that occu- 
 pation 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 
 German, 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
 
 62 ONE IMMORTALITY EOOKI 
 
 sorrow, and it said : t 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 
 galleons 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 un- 
 known 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 
 inhospitable 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 
 grottos, hidden in deep trees, for their deliverer.
 
 CHAP, vii ONE IMMORTALITY 63 
 
 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 
 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 anything 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.
 
 64 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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. 
 
 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 ;
 
 CHAP, vii ONE IMMORTALITY 65 
 
 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 
 compass, and the stars wheel round and round 
 and laugh. 
 
 Only the winds that blow from heaven are 
 true. 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.
 
 66 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 appear- 
 ance 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 
 
 67
 
 68 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, they are strange. They are of so many 
 different nations. These Germans, Austrians, 
 Italians ; I think that man over there is Greek ; 
 there is the Indian girl, and then there are our- 
 selves.' 
 
 ' 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 in- 
 dividuality.' 
 
 '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 
 superscription 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 indivi- 
 duals again have life.'
 
 CHAP, vin ONE IMMORTALITY 69 
 
 ' 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. 
 
 '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
 
 70 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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.' 
 
 ' 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 '
 
 CHAP, vin ONE IMMORTALITY 71 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 * 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 organised 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. There- 
 fore we become extraordinarily narrow. We are 
 in touch only with one form of life and thought,
 
 72 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 so that we come to think that is the absolute. 
 Whatever 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 
 answered ; ' 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.' 
 
 * 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.' 
 
 4 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
 
 CHAP, viii ONE IMMORTALITY 73 
 
 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 
 something 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 our- 
 selves sometimes ? Is there in all the world 
 anything 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 con- 
 tain all possibilities.' 
 
 * Would it not,' she answered, * be easier to 
 understand these in ourselves ? ' 
 
 ' No one,' he answered, ' ever understood 
 himself. That is the last thing possible. You
 
 74 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 might as well pull yourself from a river by catch- 
 ing 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. 
 
 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.
 
 CHAP, vin ONE IMMORTALITY 75 
 
 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 indefin- 
 able 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 ? ' 
 f I think it may be pleasant.' 
 
 ' So think I. We have no sweepstakes on the 
 
 run ; we have no quoits. We are not tyrannised 
 
 76
 
 CHAP, ix ONE IMMORTALITY 77 
 
 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.' 
 
 ' I want,' said Warden, ' to make a compact 
 with you.' 
 
 The other was silent. Somehow the words 
 inferred 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 under- 
 standing 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.'
 
 78 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 ' 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. 
 
 4 1 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.'
 
 CHAP, ix ONE IMMORTALITY 79 
 
 * 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 
 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
 
 8o ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 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 reference 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. 
 
 1 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 com-
 
 CHAP, ix ONE IMMORTALITY 81 
 
 petition 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 
 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. 
 
 G
 
 82 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 ? 
 
 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
 
 CHAP. JX ONE IMMORTALITY 83 
 
 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.' 
 
 * 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.
 
 84 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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. 
 
 * 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
 
 CHAP, ix ONE IMMORTALITY 85 
 
 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.' 
 
 86
 
 CHAP.X ONE IMMORTALITY 87 
 
 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 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
 
 88 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 ? 
 
 As far as she could see no woman had a mean- 
 ing except to one man. There were exceptions, 
 may be, 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 husbands' names, branded as 
 belonging to men. Had women then never any 
 value in themselves, 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 meaning 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
 
 CHAP, x ONE IMMORTALITY 89 
 
 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.' 
 
 * 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. Per-
 
 9 o ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 haps 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.' 
 
 ' 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
 
 CHAP.X ONE IMMORTALITY 91 
 
 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. 
 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.
 
 92 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 * 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 
 merriment. 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.'
 
 CHAP, x ONE IMMORTALITY 93 
 
 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. 
 
 * 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
 
 94 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK: 
 
 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 
 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.' 
 
 4 1 do not ask it of your religion, but of you,'
 
 CHAP.X ONE IMMORTALITY 95 
 
 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.' 
 
 1 Why are you all so happy ? ' 
 
 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.'
 
 96 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 * Because I am not a Catholic ? ' 
 
 'Not for that reason only. There are many 
 Catholic women of whom but few have given 
 themselves 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 
 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
 
 CHAP, x UNJl 1MMUKTAL.11 T 97 
 
 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 ourselves have put into our hearts a love for 
 Christ alone, and we would never let another love 
 replace it.' 
 
 ' A lower love ? ' 
 
 ' 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. 
 
 H
 
 98 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 ad- 
 vise 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.' 
 c 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.' 
 
 1 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 
 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.'
 
 CHAP.X ONE IMMORTALITY 99 
 
 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 glancing back in mockery over their 
 lucent shoulders at the uncanny monster. 
 
 Above the northern horizon hung a peak 
 suspended 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 
 
 100
 
 CHAP, xi ONE IMMORTALITY 101 
 
 woman's skin gleaming through openings of her 
 drapery. 
 
 But the ship's restfulness gave unrest to those 
 on board. While she had throbbed and moved 
 they had been content to rest, allowing her 
 movement to stand for theirs. They had been 
 soothed, lulled by her action as children by a 
 cradle's rocking. But when she stopped, uneasi- 
 ness attacked them. 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, 
 Clearasmud of Gottingen, is a painful and praise- 
 worthy history of primitive marriage customs. 
 He has read, he has collected, he has digested, he
 
 102 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOKI 
 
 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 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 observation, he might have 
 learned a good deal that would have prevented 
 him making 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, ' marriage 
 was done by capture. The young men were for- 
 bidden to marry in their own clans, and had to 
 capture their wives from clans that had other 
 totems. 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
 
 CHAP, xi ONE IMMORTALITY 103 
 
 stream or some such likely place till 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 com- 
 panions. The girl doubled, dodged, hid ; but 
 finally her lover overtook her, and then after 
 calming her cries and agitation with his club, he 
 dragged her off by the hair. Such was the primi- 
 tive marriage by capture. 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 mis- 
 observed 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 deduc- 
 tion. 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,
 
 104 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 
 pursues. 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. 
 
 * 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
 
 CHAP, xi ONE IMMORTALITY 105 
 
 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, 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.' 
 
 1 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.'
 
 106 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 c 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 the long past, that it is history, and 
 will occur no more. You think that there is 
 evolution in marriage and that it changes ; you 
 think that in this matter human nature has varied. 
 Oh, Clearasmud, were you never a student in 
 Gdttingen, 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
 
 CHAP, xi ONE IMMORTALITY 107 
 
 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 
 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
 
 io8 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 attracted. 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, 
 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
 
 CHAP, xi ONE IMMORTALITY 109 
 
 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 
 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
 
 i io ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 ? 
 
 '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.
 
 CHAP, xi ONE IMMORTALITY in 
 
 * 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 Marchesa lounged through autumn seas 
 towards Port Said. She was in no hurry and 
 she broke no records. Big liners passed her by 
 contemptuously ; 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 because 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- 
 
 112
 
 CHAP, xii ONE IMMORTALITY 113 
 
 liness, a helplessness as when a man sees that 
 which he desires drift down the stream beyond 
 his reach. 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. 
 W T hat matter? The foreward deck was empty. 
 To lean upon an anchor fluke and watch the spray
 
 u 4 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 well ? Hamlet was taciturn, but 
 comradeship lies not in spoken words. At night 
 Othello played on the guitar and sang. Some- 
 times she made accompaniment 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 
 window 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 
 porpoises 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 foreward deck, 
 a messenger would fetch him back to skittles.
 
 CHAP, xii ONE IMMORTALITY 1 1 5 
 
 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. 
 
 * And yet,' said Warden, * it does not seem 
 possible that she should marry either, or that either 
 should marry her.' 
 
 1 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
 
 n6 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK: 
 
 from us. We live our own lives. As far as 
 knowing 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 
 machine called " progress," as we have. But that 
 romance does not touch us.' 
 
 * Therefore it does not exist for us,' said 
 Warden. ' That is what I told him. But he 
 would not believe 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.
 
 CHAP, xii ONE IMMORTALITY 1 1 7 
 
 * 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 
 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 
 themselves 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 ?
 
 n8 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 question did not present itself to her as one 
 of faith, but one of vocation. A girl might marry, 
 or not 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.
 
 CHAP, xii ONE IMMORTALITY 119 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 * 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 mean- 
 ing in ourselves ? ' 
 
 ' What meaning should either have alone ? ' 
 She looked out through the porthole ; on the
 
 120 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 c 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. 
 
 * Can you believe it ? No.' 
 
 ' Then it is hard,' he said, c 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.'
 
 CHAP, xii ONE IMMORTALITY 121 
 
 ' 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 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 ? '
 
 122 UI\H IMMUKIAL,!! I BOOK i 
 
 4 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.
 
 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 
 Mediterranean 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 greenness anywhere 
 suggesting earth and all it bears. Not until the 
 ship gets nearer, and we see the lighthouse and 
 breakwater, do we realise that there is land. 
 
 123
 
 i2 4 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 Yet in this muddy sea are many ships coming 
 and going, converging to this one point, or coming 
 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.
 
 CHAP, xin ONE IMMORTALITY 125 
 
 ' This is Port Said ? ' she asked. 
 
 * This is Port Said,' answered the Professor. 
 ' I thought , I thought ,' she said. 
 
 * 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 Hoi- 
 man. 
 
 * I 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
 
 126 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 she have remained. 
 " Lesseps " spelt courage, genius, and untiring 
 effort, crowned by achievement, 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 mundi, 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 achieve-
 
 CHAP, xin ONE IMMORTALITY 127 
 
 ment 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 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 
 invaded 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
 
 128 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 Russian, one of the Volunteer Fleet intended to be 
 half merchantman, half cruiser. On this occasion 
 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 farther 
 up the harbour, passing the English liners one by 
 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 
 impending, 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 interchange 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,
 
 CHAP, xin ONE IMMORTALITY 129 
 
 at a few minutes' distance, came another ship, a 
 smaller, greyer, grimmer vessel. She was an 
 English 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. 
 
 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 Marchesa s 
 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, pas- 
 sengers from the ships ; there are Italians, Greeks, 
 and Levantines. Their face and speech differ- 
 entiates them, though their dress is all the same. 
 There are Turks and Egyptians with red fezes, 
 Arabs with stately march, negroes with coal-black 
 skins. A Parsee with his hat told of the East, a 
 Chinaman of the yet farther 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, clouds of dust and blinding sunlight. The 
 crowd is not a beautiful one ; it has neither colour, 
 
 130
 
 CHAP, xiv ONE IMMORTALITY 131 
 
 strength, nor purpose, but it is interesting because 
 so varied. At one end of the verandah a conjurer 
 was doing tricks. He brought chickens 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 announced a supernatural quality. No one 
 could do these things without some hidden 
 power that the West knew not of. His brown, 
 keen face and piercing 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 disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 ' 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
 
 i 3 2 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK: 
 
 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. 
 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 for- 
 tune-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
 
 CHAP, xiv ONE IMMORTALITY 133 
 
 different. 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,' 
 she said, ' that no one knows of ; there are mys- 
 teries that no one has ever solved or ever will. 
 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 religions 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
 
 134 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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 of Europe. Yes- 
 terday only the West to her was * home,' its 
 peoples ' we ' ; the East was foreign. And now, 
 suddenly, she found that she was identifying her- 
 self 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 c 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 
 seeking refuge from the East that called, she 
 went and took a seat beside Miss Ormond. 
 Would she not give a helping hand back over
 
 CHAP, xiv ONE IMMORTALITY 135 
 
 the gulf to her own side ? If the East beckoned 
 she would shut her eyes. * Save me,' she almost 
 cried, f oh save me from myself.' 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 constant ebb and flow. Passengers from the 
 ships, followed by men with baskets carrying their 
 purchases, came and drank coffee. What does 
 Port Said produce from out her sand ? Nothing. 
 What does she sell? Nougat made in France, 
 Turkish 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. 
 Therefore 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
 
 136 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i 
 
 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.' 
 
 ' 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.'
 
 CHAP, xiv ONE IMMORTALITY 137 
 
 * 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. 
 
 * I s that why Holman looks so young ? ' asked 
 Warden. 
 
 ' That is the reason.' 
 
 * That is all wrong,' said Holman. * Women 
 take and do not give.' 
 
 * 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
 
 138 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK: 
 
 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.
 
 139
 
 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 dis- 
 appeared 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 
 
 141
 
 i 4 2 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 nothing she could not do as well as he could, may- 
 be 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 
 distinguished 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
 
 CHAP, xv ONE IMMORTALITY 143 
 
 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 
 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 
 unnecessary, useless, wicked, and their day was 
 past. She had heard and read beautiful pro- 
 phecies 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
 
 144 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 not imagine, could not think of a woman's crew 
 oh 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 
 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 
 different 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 revelation. 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 disappeared. 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 extreme. Then the 
 old truth was true. The world was men's, and
 
 CHAP, xv ONE IMMORTALITY 145 
 
 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 won- 
 derful night,' he said, and she knew that it was 
 Holt. 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 * What are you thinking of ?' he said. 'The 
 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 bitter- 
 ness in her voice. ' But many women wish they 
 had been men.' 
 
 L
 
 146 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 * 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. 
 Suppose you had been a woman, think how you 
 would feel.' 
 
 * 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 
 famous. 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.'
 
 CHAP, xv ONE IMMORTALITY 147 
 
 1 1 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. 
 ' 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 or of 
 his destiny, no one. I think you observe only a 
 part of man's life and not the whole, only the re- 
 wards, 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
 
 148 ONE IMMORTALITY TOOK H 
 
 women, it is only an appearance. We are de- 
 pendent 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, there- 
 fore 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 independent? The great 
 majority of mankind are employed in some way 
 or another. They are dependent on their em- 
 ployer. 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 dependent on 
 Fate. When you say that men are free to make 
 their own lives, you are wrong. They are de- 
 pendent just as you are. It is a different depend- 
 ence, that is all.' 
 
 ' But you are not dependent on women.' 
 
 'Not for our livelihood, true, but for every- 
 thing 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
 
 CHAP, xv ONE IMMORTALITY 149 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 '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
 
 150 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK u 
 
 make more money, or get some honour for their 
 wives. So they work on, and often enough die/ 
 
 * 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 Jess 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 
 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.
 
 CHAP, xv ONE IMMORTALITY 151 
 
 '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 
 answered. ' 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 Marches a 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 
 weakness and of loneliness that grew. 
 
 152
 
 CHAP, xvi ONE IMMORTALITY 153 
 
 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 
 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 ' un- 
 thinkingly. 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
 
 154 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 things. Was it woman, even ? He paused. 
 Women can be bought sometimes, or won, or 
 carried off. Was it a woman ? No ! 
 
 What then ? 
 
 It was a woman's love, and that cannot be 
 earned, or forced, or 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 under- 
 stand 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 independent of woman ? 
 Was there ever such a folly ? If she was de- 
 pendent 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
 
 CHAP, xvi ONE IMMORTALITY 155 
 
 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.' 
 
 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 
 distances 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
 
 156 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK u 
 
 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 ? 
 Perhaps 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. 
 
 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
 
 CHAP, xvi ONE IMMORTALITY 157 
 
 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 
 
 D 
 
 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.' 
 
 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.
 
 158 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK,, 
 
 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. 
 
 4 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 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 them- 
 selves, but to the world. For they kept before
 
 CHAP, xn ONE IMMORTALITY 159 
 
 it always the remembrance 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 
 treasure to some one that we love. You do not 
 mind ? ' 
 
 * I like to hear you talk,' she answered. ' You 
 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.
 
 160 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK,, 
 
 * 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, 
 because she thinks that in the abstract the married 
 is the better life, because she wants a home, be- 
 cause 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 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
 
 CHAP, xvi ONE IMMORTALITY 161 
 
 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 friend- 
 less, 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. 
 
 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 
 
 M
 
 162 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 semblance of green garment anywhere 
 no trees, no grass, no bushes. Their flanks were 
 red and yellow, 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. 
 
 163
 
 164 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOKH 
 
 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? 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. However, 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
 
 CHAP, xvii ONE IMMORTALITY 165 
 
 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.' 
 
 1 What was the quarrel ? ' 
 
 ' A mere nothing. Holt, the Professor, your 
 husband, and I were sitting in the smoking- 
 room ; we sat and smoked and drank, not, I must 
 say, in 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 ostentatiously simple nature, just 
 so that the silence should not become too unbear- 
 able. 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
 
 1 66 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK 
 
 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- 
 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. 
 
 ' 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
 
 CHAP, xvn ONE IMMORTALITY 167 
 
 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.' 
 
 ' 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
 
 i68 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK H 
 
 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 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
 
 CHAP, xvn ONE IMMORTALITY 169 
 
 fitted to be soldiers. They have made a great 
 mistake in entering. It is so no doubt with other 
 things.' 
 
 Holman had come. He heard what Warden 
 said. ' Nothing can be more true,' he said ; 
 4 and that is the root of the trouble with the 
 Grahams. He was an excellent soldier and de- 
 voted 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 pre- 
 vented 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 is a loafer and hates himself for 
 being so, and she despises him for the same 
 reason.' 
 
 4 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.
 
 170 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 'And do you think,' asked Warden of Mrs. 
 Holman, c 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 ? ' 
 
 ' What is the difference then between a man 
 and 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 
 perspective, roundness, and reality to the view. 
 Neither alone sees the world whole.' 
 
 ' Which is the best ? ' But all three of them 
 began to laugh.
 
 CHAP, xvn ONE IMMORTALITY 171 
 
 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 
 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 Marchesa. The men liked Graham.
 
 172 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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. 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. 
 
 173
 
 174 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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, 
 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 from 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
 
 CHAP.XVIII ONE IMMORTALITY 175 
 
 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 without 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
 
 176 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK u 
 
 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 something to rest on, that had made her un- 
 happy because it could find no fitting subject, 
 poured forth upon the Virgin Mother. 
 
 She began then to understand the crucified 
 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 necessary 
 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
 
 CHAP, xvm ONE IMMORTALITY 177 
 
 is what binds him to the world his love of every- 
 thing 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 Com- 
 passion. Man has his work ; he has been dowered 
 with qualities to do it. Woman has her 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. 
 
 N
 
 178 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 *T 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.' 
 
 * 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/
 
 CHAP, xvni ONE IMMORTALITY 179 
 
 ' 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 com- 
 panionship 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 makes soldiers into a regiment, but a love 
 to something higher, richer, than themselves their 
 regiment, 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
 
 180 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 called you will not think of that,' she answered. 
 ' But you will not be called.' She smiled. 
 
 ' How can you tell ? ' 
 
 c 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 smouldered. 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 
 heartless 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 con- 
 tented 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 
 
 181
 
 1 82 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 evident he is not in love. Perhaps he always knew 
 he was not. He has realised it, and become a 
 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,
 
 CHAP, xix ONE IMMORTALITY 183 
 
 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 
 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 Jove ? 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
 
 1 84 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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.' 
 
 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 beau- 
 tiful, 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.
 
 CHAP, xix ONE IMMORTALITY 185 
 
 * 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 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. Alike 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 disap-
 
 186 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 peared. 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 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
 
 CHAP, xix ONE IMMORTALITY 187 
 
 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 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 the 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
 
 1 88 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK H 
 
 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.' 
 
 Holt sat beside the Professor. 'And can I 
 furnish 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 sisterhoods. They loved the State. They 
 were religious, for they knew that the secret of 
 religion, too, is love that of humanity. They were
 
 CHAP, xix ONE IMMORTALITY 189 
 
 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 
 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 ? * 
 
 4 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 ? '
 
 1 90 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOKH 
 
 ' 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, 
 Professor ? ' 
 
 * 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 
 Professor said was true ? Yes, he knew. Then 
 how 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.'
 
 CHAP, xix ONE IMMORTALITY 191 
 
 ' 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 
 unreturned. It could not be. But the manifesta- 
 tion in each is different.' 
 
 ' 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.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 192 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 'It is most valuable. I told you to read and 
 disbelieve.' 
 
 'You mean, believe the opposite of what he 
 says ? Well, I will go and do so. This Red Sea 
 makes disbelief in anything quite easy. I can 
 hardly believe there ever was a Europe.' 
 1 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 
 193 o
 
 i 9 4 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 the hospital, a larger room with portholes opening 
 forward, and a skylight on the deck. But they 
 were all closed, for the wind blew in at every 
 opening, 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 hopelessness 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 ?
 
 CHAP, xx ONE IMMORTALITY 195 
 
 Without, in the corner of the deserted saloon, 
 the other Sisters knelt. They could not help 
 except by prayer. One of them was going into 
 the 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.
 
 196 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK 
 
 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 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 knows 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 Bride- 
 groom 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.
 
 CHAP, xx ONE IMMORTALITY 197 
 
 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 ? 
 
 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, 
 unknowing 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.
 
 198 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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. 
 
 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.'
 
 CHAP, xx ONE IMMORTALITY 199 
 
 ' 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 ? ' 
 
 * 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 disproved the saying that was 
 always being thrust upon her, that to women man
 
 200 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 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. 
 ' Neither this world nor the next is man's or 
 woman's, but both worlds belong to them and us. 
 They cannot 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 '
 
 CHAP, xx ONE IMMORTALITY 201 
 
 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 perfect 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 beginning 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
 
 CHAP, xxi ONE IMMORTALITY 203 
 
 than true ? Could it have come to us through all 
 these centuries had it not held a truth that is 
 eternal ? 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
 
 204 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 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 ignorance 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
 
 CHAP, xxi ONE IMMORTALITY 205 
 
 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 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 endure. 
 ' 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 under- 
 stand. So began love within the garden ; it was
 
 206 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 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, 
 outside the garden, seeds of the tree of the know- 
 ledge of good and evil, and all the world has 
 eaten of it. 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 ot 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.'
 
 CHAP, xxi ONE IMMORTALITY 207 
 
 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. 
 
 '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.
 
 208 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 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
 
 CHAP, xxi ONE IMMORTALITY 209 
 
 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 women. 
 " 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 mid- 
 night.' 
 
 ' 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 
 ashore and hope for the best.'
 
 210 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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.' 
 
 1 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.' 
 
 ' 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
 
 CHAP, xxi ONE IMMORTALITY 211 
 
 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 sun- 
 light, 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 
 promise 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 distance. The heat burned them, 
 the glare enveloped them, carts came by and 
 
 212
 
 CHAP, xxn ONE IMMORTALITY 213 
 
 cast a choking cloud of dust upon them, but they 
 kept on. 
 
 They left the town and followed the sea as 
 closely 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.' 
 
 4 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 
 overcharged brain, as a storm-cloud bursts that 
 peace may come again.
 
 2i 4 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 had been kind to both, she had en- 
 couraged 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, him-
 
 CHAP, xxn ONE IMMORTALITY 215 
 
 self 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.' 
 
 ' 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
 
 2i6 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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, * 1 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. 
 
 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 won- 
 dered should he separate them. But no. The 
 storm had passed. 
 
 They walked back almost silently. Othello
 
 CHAP, xxn ONE IMMORTALITY 217 
 
 suddenly 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 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 
 harbour 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. 
 1 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 remembered.
 
 218 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 ' 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 to- 
 gether, 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.'
 
 CHAP, xxn ONE IMMORTALITY 219 
 
 * 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 
 recalled 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 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 attention. 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.'
 
 220 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 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.
 
 CHAP, xxn ONE IMMORTALITY 221 
 
 ' 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 con- 
 tinue 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?' 
 
 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
 
 222 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 
 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. 
 
 4 When shall we meet again, Professor ? In 
 a few years we shall be home again. Come and 
 
 see us in England.' 
 
 223
 
 224 NE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 * Come and see me in Germany,' said the Pro- 
 fessor. ' In two years I shall be back.' 
 
 ' 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 under-
 
 CHAP, xxin ONE IMMORTALITY 225 
 
 neath the good red blood. Here's to our next 
 meeting anywhere ! ' He raised his hand and gave 
 a shout that made the harbour echo. 
 
 * 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 dream- 
 ing. 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
 
 226 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 smoking-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 d&shabilU 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.
 
 CHAP, xxin ONE IMMORTALITY 227 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 c We do not know it,' answered Holman gravely. 
 ' If he has, it is not with our knowledge or con- 
 nivance.' 
 
 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, * here 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
 
 228 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 
 Africa with the Professor. It appears he has 
 arranged 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 ex- 
 pected such a thing.' 
 
 4 She might have done so,' 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.'
 
 CHAP, xxin ONE IMMORTALITY 229 
 
 1 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 
 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 
 together 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.'
 
 230 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK a 
 
 ' 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 
 scornfully, * 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 know- 
 ledge. You never do. You talk of mysteries 
 and shake 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 
 relations. 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,
 
 CHAP. xxii. ONE IMMORTALITY 231 
 
 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, c< 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.' 
 
 ' 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 a unit. But 
 let the man cease to be a man, let the woman 
 cease to be a woman, and the balance is upset.
 
 132 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 
 warning, that love was a sacred fire from 
 Heaven that must be kept alight or it would 
 die. To its fulfilment went everything a man 
 possessed his body, life, and soul, his will, his 
 knowledge. Heaven begins, but will and know- 
 ledge consummate. 
 
 * Holman has frightened me,' said Warden, 
 rising. * He said that our ideas of marriage were 
 black cats 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 ? '
 
 CHAP, xxin ONE IMMORTALITY 233 
 
 * Not I,' laughed Holt. 
 
 * Then you are mad,' said Warden. 
 1 What if lam?' 
 
 * 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, 
 murmuring 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 
 eternity. It told of secrets that have been for 
 ever and will be for ever more. It seemed to 
 
 234
 
 CHAP, xxiv ONE IMMORTALITY 235 
 
 them both that they lived within a magic circle 
 where were they two alone. The world went on 
 about them-^-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 them- 
 selves. 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. 
 
 c You love me. You have loved me always
 
 236 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 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. 1 
 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
 
 CHAP, xxiv ONE IMMORTALITY 237 
 
 know that country better than I do. It is your 
 country.' 
 
 * I do not know it or the way. I will not go 
 there. Why should I go ? Why should you go ? 
 What should we find that we have not ? ' 
 
 1 A soul.' 
 
 ' Have you not now a soul ? ' 
 
 'No!' 
 
 <NorI?' 
 
 * 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 or 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
 
 238 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 
 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 ? '
 
 CHAP, xxiv ONE IMMORTALITY 239 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 ' And there is none ? ' she said ; c 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 ? ' 
 
 c Yes, I will take you, all of you. I want 
 somewhere 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,
 
 2 4 o ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 ' 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 pre- 
 scription that is to them unknown ? ' 
 
 ' It has cured others.' 
 
 * How do you know ? ' 
 ' I see it.' 
 
 * Maybe. Some like it. But others there are
 
 CHAP. XXI V ONE IMMORTALITY 241 
 
 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 observed. 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 attraction. But often, too, 
 each sat alone, and dreamed alone, as if the world 
 did not exist. 
 
 She tried to comprehend what love and mar- 
 riage 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, or whither it would take her. 
 
 She must know first her way. 
 
 242
 
 CHAP, xxv ONE IMMORTALITY 243 
 
 'Tell me,' she asked him, 'have you dis- 
 covered ? ' 
 
 'No' ; he shook his head. 'No one can. And 
 if I could I would not. I am not afraid of the 
 unknown ; I want it ; I am tired of beaten tracks.' 
 
 * Yes ; you are reckless, 1 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
 
 244 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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.' 
 
 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.'
 
 CHAP, xxv ONE IMMORTALITY 245 
 
 * The only other case on board is you.' 
 'And you.' 
 
 ' Not me. You may leave me out. Let us 
 consider you. You tell me you are in love ? ' 
 
 ado, 1 
 
 ' How can you tell that it will last ? ' 
 
 ' 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 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.'
 
 246 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 * 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.* 
 
 * They fought, and now have separated.' 
 ' That was no marriage, I say.' 
 
 * How can you tell what is and is not mar- 
 riage ? 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 answered "Stop! I must know just what 
 my life is to be like before I want to be born."
 
 CHAP. xxv ONE IMMORTALITY 247 
 
 * 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.' 
 
 4 You will.' 
 
 ' I will not. I will use my judgment.' 
 
 1 And it says ? ' 
 
 * There is no hurry, and see your way before 
 you jump. Shall we be friends and forget all 
 this?' 
 
 ' 1 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
 
 248 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK H 
 
 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.' 
 
 * 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 
 
 'DiD 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. 
 
 4 1 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, beware ! never be guardians.' 
 
 249
 
 250 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 * But why run ? ' asked Warden. ' You were 
 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.' 
 
 1 1 will,' said Mrs. Holman, * and it will be a 
 warning 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
 
 CHAP, xxvi ONE IMMORTALITY 251 
 
 was brought up at school. He died in some out- 
 landish part, and when his will was opened it was 
 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 
 armour 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.
 
 252 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK 
 
 Holman. * I wondered what on earth you were 
 doing.' 
 
 ' I went towards the door to meet the little 
 girl, 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
 
 CHAP, xxvi ONE IMMORTALITY 253 
 
 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, 
 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
 
 254 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 with him a few times. She liked you, Harry, 
 though you were so afraid of her.' 
 
 * May not a guardian take his ward out walk- 
 ing?' 
 
 * 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 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 
 virtuously. ' A tacit, underhand agreement con- 
 cealed 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.
 
 CHAP, xxvi ONE IMMORTALITY 255 
 
 ' 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- 
 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. 
 
 e I mean both of us did ; and oh,' she said, 
 addressing the two girls, f always be run away with
 
 256 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 something 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 morn- 
 ing made to run away in. I never shall forget it 
 when I came out of the garden door into that 
 bright world the freshness and the glory of it all.' 
 She stopped and smiled. Her thoughts went back 
 with gladness to that beginning 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 re- 
 member ? 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
 
 CHAP, xxvi ONE IMMORTALITY 257 
 
 have 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. 
 
 4 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 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 were 
 passed and night was come together. They 
 would go through the darkness till they came to 
 other greater dawns.
 
 ROOK II 
 
 258 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 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, ( l 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.' 
 
 And Holt remembered the Professor and the 
 book. * Read it and disbelieve,' said the Pro- 
 fessor. He had read it ; what had he to dis- 
 believe ? 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 weak- 
 ness or the strength ? Man loves woman and 
 woman loves man ; which is the greater love ? 
 There is no lesser or no greater. They are 
 different, and together they make up a whole.
 
 CHAP, xxvi ONE IMMORTALITY 259 
 
 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, 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 be- 
 cause 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 
 
 260
 
 CHAP, xxvn ONE IMMORTALITY 261 
 
 to the victor. To fight about a girl that neither 
 loves is sheerest folly. 
 
 And neither loved her ; they knew that now. 
 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.
 
 262 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 
 strength, the vigour that it gives. I got accus- 
 tomed 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 
 civilisation, 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 ;
 
 CHAP, xxvii ONE IMMORTALITY 263 
 
 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 again be happy in the East. 
 But now it is all different. 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 forgotten 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 reject. 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
 
 264 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 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 ? ' 
 
 ' 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 or 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.
 
 CHAP, xxvii ONE IMMORTALITY 265 
 
 It gives light and warmth ; it does not sear or 
 hurt. It is the union of two hearts, two souls to 
 gain an immortality. 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 I know ? Perhaps it's sometimes the one, 
 sometimes 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 so 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
 
 266 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 judge. But I will tell you what my people say. 
 They say that the Western people have no idea 
 what marriage is, or family. 
 
 ' Marriage is a 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 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 
 perfect, 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 children accept their fathers, mothers, brothers, 
 sisters. There is a warm and close affection, and 
 a habit of mind quite different from what you call
 
 CHAP, xxvu ONE IMMORTALITY 267 
 
 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. 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. Children grow up without their parents. 
 Even in England 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 com- 
 pany of other men as your women do. Their
 
 268 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK i, 
 
 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 hus- 
 band'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.' 
 
 '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 r ' 
 
 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
 
 CHAP, xxvn ONE IMMORTALITY 269 
 
 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 
 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 contra- 
 diction.' 
 
 Out of her questionings she came back to 
 present things. 
 
 4 If that be so,' she asked, l if marriage must 
 begin with childhood with your people, what will 
 you do ? You are not married ? ' She smiled
 
 >- 
 
 270 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK u 
 
 with sympathy into the girl's dark face. * But, 
 forgive me, I should not say such things or 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 organisa- 
 tions 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 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
 
 CHAP, xxvn ONE IMMORTALITY 271 
 
 see the falsehood and the foolishness of things. 
 Everything is false seen by the mind, for to every- 
 thing 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 
 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
 
 272 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 
 
 273 T
 
 274 ONE IMMORTALITY 
 
 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 
 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,
 
 CHAP, xxvni ONE IMMORTALITY 275 
 
 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.' 
 
 ' Truly,' said Warden, ' we forget it. But,' 
 he continued, ' you would not have women turn 
 nuns nowadays, shut themselves up, make them- 
 selves 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 religion so if women 
 are to have societies to cultivate 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
 
 276 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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 
 Protestant countries there is nothing. A girl 
 must marry, or be a lonely spinster. A woman 
 in herself is no one ; womanhood of itself has no 
 honour. 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. 
 
 4 And I am sorry,' she went on, * to leave you
 
 CHAI-. xxvin ONE IMMORTALITY 277 
 
 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.' 
 
 4 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 
 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.'
 
 278 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK u 
 
 ' They Joved 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 
 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
 
 CHAP, xxvin ONE IMMORTALITY 279 
 
 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 him- 
 self. 
 
 The music passed across the sea and mingled 
 with the murmurs of the waves. 
 
 The music died away. They sat a little look- 
 ing 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 gratings. 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 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 loneliness. 
 
 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?
 
 2 8o ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK 
 
 * 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 
 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 ? '
 
 CHAP, xxvm ONE IMMORTALITY 281 
 
 ' 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 
 incarnated 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 a 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 ? ' 
 
 ' Canst thou ? ' 
 
 ' I can. For life and love are mine ; Death is 
 my servant.' 
 
 * Then speak on ; I listen/ 
 
 * Rise up/
 
 282 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 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. 
 
 c You asked me "What is Love?" he whispered. 
 ' It is this and this. You asked me " What is 
 Marriage ? " 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.' 
 
 '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.'
 
 CHAP, xxvni ONE IMMORTALITY 283 
 
 ' You hid from me.' 
 
 4 1 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.' 
 
 ' It has reached Heaven ; in Heaven it came 
 to us.'
 
 284 ONE IMMORTALITY BOOK n 
 
 * High Heaven is in our hearts our hearts/ 
 
 * Our heart, for we have one. One life, one 
 death, one Immortality.' 
 
 Then the sun rose. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printtdby R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh
 
 By H. FIELDING HALL 
 
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