n be happy in the realisation of her
transformed, changed, made celestial. I am only human. Her soul! That
was beautiful, no doubt. But, again, it was something very vague,
intangible, hardly more than a phrase. But the touch of her hand was
real, the sound of her voice was real, the clasp of her arms about my
neck was real. Oh," he cried, shaken with a sudden wrench of passion,
"give those back to me. Tell your God to give those back to me--the
sound of her voice, the touch of her hand, the clasp of her dear arms,
REAL, REAL, and then you may talk to me of Heaven."

Sarria shook his head. "But when you meet her again," he observed, "in
Heaven, you, too, will be changed. You will see her spiritualised, with
spiritual eyes. As she is now, she does not appeal to you. I understand
that. It is because, as you say, you are only human, while she is
divine. But when you come to be like her, as she is now, you will know
her as she really is, not as she seemed to be, because her voice was
sweet, because her hair was pretty, because her hand was warm in yours.
Vanamee, your talk is that of a foolish child. You are like one of
the Corinthians to whom Paul wrote. Do you remember? Listen now. I can
recall the words, and such words, beautiful and terrible at the same
time, such a majesty. They march like soldiers with trumpets. 'But some
man will say'--as you have said just now--'How are the dead raised up?
And with what body do they come? Thou fool! That which thou sowest is
not quickened except it die, and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not
that body that shall be, but bare grain. It may chance of wheat, or of
some other grain. But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and
to every seed his own body.... It is sown a natural body; it is raised
a spiritual body.' It is because you are a natural body that you cannot
understand her, nor wish for her as a spiritual body, but when you are
both spiritual, then you shall know each other as you are--know as you
never knew before. Your grain of wheat is your symbol of immortality.
You bury it in the earth. It dies, and rises again a thousand times more
beautiful. Vanamee, your dear girl was only a grain of humanity that
we have buried here, and the end is not yet. But all this is so old, so
old. The world learned it a thousand years ago, and yet each man that
has ever stood by the open grave of any one he loved must learn it all
over again from the beginning."

Vanamee was silen