t been over
the whole ground. Maybe there's some principle that I've missed." He
hitched his chair closer to Ewbert's, and laid some tremulous fingers on
the minister's sleeve. "If I've got to live forever, what have I got to
live for?"

"Well," said Ewbert, meeting him fully in his humility, "let us try to
make it out together. Let us try to think. Apparently, our way has
brought us to a dead wall; but I believe there's light beyond it, if we
can only break through. Is it really necessary that we should discover
some new principle? Do we know all that love can do from our experience
of it here?"

"Have you seen a mother with her child?" Hilbrook retorted.

"Yes, I know. But even that has some alloy of selfishness. Can't we
imagine love in which there is no greed,--for greed, and not hate, is
the true antithesis of love which is all giving, while greed is all
getting,--a love that is absolutely pure?"

"_I_ can't," said the old man. "All the love I ever felt had greed in
it; I wanted to keep the thing I loved for myself."

"Yes, because you were afraid in the midst of your love. It was fear
that alloyed it, not greed. And in easily imaginable conditions in which
there is no fear of want, or harm, or death, love would be pure; for it
is these things that greed itself wants to save us from. You can imagine
conditions in which there shall be no fear, in which love casteth out
fear?"

"Well," said Hilbrook provisionally.

Ewbert had not thought of these points himself before, and he was
pleased with his discovery, though afterwards he was aware that it was
something like an intellectual juggle. "You see," he temporized, "we
have got rid of two of the passions already, fear and greed, which are
the potentialities of our unhappiest experience in this life. In fact,
we have got rid of three, for without fear and greed men cannot hate."

"But how can we exist without them?" Hilbrook urged. "Shall we be made
up of two passions,--of love and hope alone?"

"Why not?" Ewbert returned, with what he felt a specious brightness.

"Because we should not be complete beings with these two elements
alone."

"Ah, as we know ourselves here, I grant you," said the minister. "But
why should we not be far more simply constituted somewhere else? Have
you ever read Isaac Taylor's Physical Theory of another Life? He argues
that the immortal body would be a far less complex mechanism than the
mortal body. Why should not the immortal s