oolishly, say is death.
'Suppression,' I say, not extinction. I do not say that life returns.
Life never departs. Life simply IS. For certain seasons, it is hidden in
the dark, but is that death, extinction, annihilation? I take it, thank
God, that it is not. Does the grain of wheat, hidden for certain seasons
in the dark, die? The grain we think is dead RESUMES AGAIN; but how? Not
as one grain, but as twenty. So all life. Death is only real for all the
detritus of the world, for all the sorrow, for all the injustice,
for all the grief. Presley, the good never dies; evil dies, cruelty,
oppression, selfishness, greed--these die; but nobility, but love, but
sacrifice, but generosity, but truth, thank God for it, small as they
are, difficult as it is to discover them--these live forever, these are
eternal. You are all broken, all cast down by what you have seen in this
valley, this hopeless struggle, this apparently hopeless despair. Well,
the end is not yet. What is it that remains after all is over, after the
dead are buried and the hearts are broken? Look at it all from the vast
height of humanity--'the greatest good to the greatest numbers.' What
remains? Men perish, men are corrupted, hearts are rent asunder, but
what remains untouched, unassailable, undefiled? Try to find that, not
only in this, but in every crisis of the world's life, and you will
find, if your view be large enough, that it is not evil, but good, that
in the end remains."

There was a long pause. Presley, his mind full of new thoughts, held his
peace, and Vanamee added at length:

"I believed Angele dead. I wept over her grave; mourned for her as dead
in corruption. She has come back to me, more beautiful than ever. Do not
ask me any further. To put this story, this idyl, into words, would, for
me, be a profanation. This must suffice you. Angele has returned to me,
and I am happy. Adios."

He rose suddenly. The friends clasped each other's hands.

"We shall probably never meet again," said Vanamee; "but if these are
the last words I ever speak to you, listen to them, and remember them,
because I know I speak the truth. Evil is short-lived. Never judge of
the whole round of life by the mere segment you can see. The whole is,
in the end, perfect."

Abruptly he took himself away. He was gone. Presley, alone, thoughtful,
his hands clasped behind him, passed on through the ranches--here
teeming with ripened wheat--his face set from them forever.