all grow beneath MY hand. And if it be that,
labouring here for years, I should not find one stone, at least I will
be with the men that labour here. I shall hear their shout of joy when
each stone is found; I shall join in their triumph, I shall shout among
them; I shall see the crown grow." So great was my longing as I looked
at the crown, I thought a faint light fell from my forehead also.

God said, "Do you not hear the singing in the gardens?"

I said, "No, I hear nothing; I see only the crown." And I was dumb with
longing; I forgot all the flowers of the lower Heaven and the singing
there. And I ran forward, and threw my mantle on the earth and bent to
seize one of the mighty tools which lay there. I could not lift it from
the earth.

God said, "Where hast THOU earned the strength to raise it? Take up thy
mantle."

And I took up my mantle and followed where God called me; but I looked
back, and I saw the crown burning, my crown that I had loved.

Higher and higher we climbed, and the air grew thinner. Not a tree or
plant was on the bare rocks, and the stillness was unbroken. My breath
came hard and quick, and the blood crept within my finger-tips. I said
to God, "Is this Heaven?"

God said, "Yes; it is the highest."

And still we climbed. I said to God, "I cannot breathe so high."

God said, "Because the air is pure?"

And my head grew dizzy, and as I climbed the blood burst from my
finger-tips.

Then we came out upon a lonely mountain-top.

No living being moved there; but far off on a solitary peak I saw a
lonely figure standing. Whether it were man or woman I could not tell;
for partly it seemed the figure of a woman, but its limbs were the
mighty limbs of a man. I asked God whether it was man or woman.

God said, "In the least Heaven sex reigns supreme; in the higher it is
not noticed; but in the highest it does not exist."

And I saw the figure bend over its work, and labour mightily, but what
it laboured at I could not see.

I said to God, "How came it here?"

God said, "By a bloody stair. Step by step it mounted from the lowest
Hell, and day by day as Hell grew farther and Heaven no nearer, it hung
alone between two worlds. Hour by hour in that bitter struggle its limbs
grew larger, till there fell from it rag by rag the garments which it
started with. Drops fell from its eyes as it strained them; each step it
climbed was wet with blood. Then it came out here."

And I thought of the gard