e life of its parents, but the life of the
whole creation was present in the cell it started from. Think how our
body comes charged with spiritual energies, indestructible instincts,
infinite memories that are not ours; that its life, from minute to
minute, goes on by a process of combustion, the explosion of untamable
forces, and that we--_we_--unmake the work of millions of aeons in a
moment, that we charge it with _our_ will, _our_ instincts, _our_
memories, so that there's not an atom of our flesh unpenetrated by
spirit, not a cell of our bodies that doesn't hold some spiritual germ
of us--so that we multiply our souls in our bodies; and their dust, when
they scatter, is the seed of _our_ universe, flung heaven knows where."

For a moment the clever imp looked out of Laura's eyes. "Do you know,"
she said, "it makes me feel as if I had millions and millions of
intoxicated brains, all trying to grasp something, and all reeling, and
I can't tell whether it's you who are intoxicated, or I. And I want to
know how you know about it."

A change passed over his face. It became suddenly still and
incommunicable.

"And the only thing I want to know," she wailed, "you won't tell me, and
it's all very dim and disagreeable and sad."

"What won't I tell you?"

"What's become of the things that made Papa so adorable?"

"I've been trying to tell you. I've been trying to make you see."

"I can only see that they've gone."

"And I can only see that they exist more exquisitely, more intensely
than ever. Too intensely for your senses, or his, to be aware of them."

"Ah----"

"And I should say the same of a still-born baby that I had never seen
alive, or of a lunatic whom I had not once seen sane."

"How do you know?" she reiterated.

"I can't tell you."

"You can't tell me anything, and your very face shuts up when I look at
it."

"I can't tell you anything," he said gently. "I can only talk to you
like an intoxicated medical student, and it's time for me to go."

She did not seem to have heard him, and they sat silent.

It was as if their silence was a borderland; as if they were both
pausing there before they plunged; behind them the unspoken, the
unspeakable; before them the edge of perilous speech.

"I'm glad I've seen you," she said at last.

He ignored the valediction of her tone.

"And when am I to see you again?" he said.

This time she did not answer, and he had a profound sense of the pause.

He ask