es.

"Am _I_ in heaven?"

It was the same voice that had said to Miss Axtell, "Will you send me
out again?" that spake these words.

Was he going into delirium again? I was desirous of keeping him upon our
planet, and I said,--

"Oh, no,--they don't need morphine in heaven."

"They need _you_ there, though. You must go _now_," he said; and he made
an effort to take the glass from my hand.

"I have never been in heaven," I said.

"Then they deceive, they deceive, and there isn't any heaven! Oh, what
if after all there shouldn't be such a place?"

He lifted up his one usable hand in agony.

"We wait until we die, before going there," I said; "I am alive, don't
you see?"

"Alive, and not dead? you! whom I killed eighteen years ago, have you
come to reproach me now? Oh, I have suffered, even to atonement, for it!
You would pardon, if you only knew what I have suffered for you."

Surely delirium had returned. I urged the poor man to take the contents
of the glass.

He promised, upon condition of my forgiveness,--forgiveness for having
killed me, who never had been killed, who was surely alive. Jeffy had
come in again, and had listened to the pleading.

"Why don't you tell him yes, Miss Anna? He doesn't know a word he's
sayin'. It'll keep him quiet like; he's like a baby," he whispered, with
a covert pull at my dress by way of impressment.

And so, guided by Chloe's boy, I said, "I forgive."

"Why don't you go, if you forgive me? I don't like to keep you here,
when you belong up there"; and he pointed his words by the aid of his
available hand.

I knew then _why_ Miss Axtell had loved this man: it was simply one of
those cruel, compulsory offerings up of self, that allure one, in open
sight of torture, on to the altar. Oh, poor woman! why hath thy Maker
so forsaken thee? And in mute wonder at this most wondrous wrong, that
crept into mortal life when the serpent went out through Eden and
left an opening in the Garden, I forgot for the while my present
responsibility, in compassionate pity for the pale, beautiful lady in
Redleaf, into whose heart this man had come,--unwillingly, I knew, when
I looked into his face, and yet, _having come, must grow into its Eden,
even unto the time that Eternity shadows;_ and I sent out the arms of my
spirit, and twined them invisibly around her, who truly had spoken when
she said, "I want you," with such hungry tones. God, the Infinite,
has given me comprehension of such w