of a mysterious being who loved her and whom she loved, asked her who this
person was, she answered:

"I can love nothing here on earth."

"What dost thou love then?" asked Minna.

"Heaven" was the reply.

This obscurity and uncertainty as to what manner of love it was that
absorbed Seraphita, and who was the object of it, could not have been
possible had it been the usual devotion of the _religeuse_.

Seraphita, whose consciousness extended far beyond that of the people about
her, could not have explained to her friends that the invisible realms were
as real to her as the visible universe was to those with only
sense-consciousness. It was impossible to explain to them that she had
found and knew her mate, even though she had not met him in the physical
body.

To Wilfrid she said she loved "God." To Minna she used the term "Heaven,"
and when Minna questioned: "But art thou worthy of heaven when thou
despisest the creatures of God?" Seraphita answered:

"Couldst thou love two beings at once? Would a lover be a lover if he did
not fill the heart? Should he not be the first, the last, the only one? She
who loves will she not quit the world for her lover? Her entire family
becomes a memory; she has no longer a relative. The lover! she has given
him her whole soul. If she has kept a fraction of it, she does not love. To
love feebly, is that to love? The word of the lover makes all her joy, and
quivers in her veins like a purple deeper than blood; his glance is a light
which penetrates her; she dissolves in him; there, where he is, all is
beautiful; he is warmth to the soul: he irradiates everything; near him
could one know cold or night? He is never absent; he is ever within us; we
think in him, to him, for him. Minna, that is the-way I love."

And when Minna, like Wilfrid, "seized by a devouring jealousy," demanded to
know "whom?" Seraphita answered, "God." This she did because the one whom
she loved became her God. We are told that "love makes gods of men."
Perfect love, the love of those who are spiritual-mates--soul-mates--the
"man-woman-god whom we await," becomes an immortal: and immortals are gods.

Moreover if Seraphita had intended to teach the love of the religious
devotee to The Absolute instead of a perfected sex-love, she would not have
pointed out to both Wilfrid and Minna that which she, in her superior
vision, her supra-consciousness, perceived, namely, that Wilfrid and Minna
were really intended f