of strenuous efforts to recall them. But now and again on sinking
into sleep the vague memory of those forgotten dreams would come
back, and they were all of a strange life under new conditions--just
such a life as Martia had described--where arabesques of artificial
light and interwoven curves of subtle sound had a significance
undreamt of by mortal eyes or ears, and served as conductors to a
heavenly bliss unknown to earth--revelations denied to us here, or
we should be very different beings from what we most unhappily are.

He thought it quite possible that his brain in sleep had at last
become so active through the exhausting and depleting medical regime
that he went through in Malines that it actually was able to dictate
its will to his body, and that everything might have happened to him
as it did then and afterwards without any supernatural or
ultranatural agency whatever--without a Martia!

He might, in short, have led a kind of dual life, and Martia might
be a simple fancy or invention of his brain in an abnormal state of
activity during slumber; and both Leah and I inclined to this belief
(but for a strange thing which happened later, and which I will tell
in due time). Indeed, it all seems so silly and far-fetched, so "out
of the question," that one feels almost ashamed at bringing this
Martia into a serious biography of a great man--un conte a dormir
debout! But you must wait for the end.

Anyhow, the singular fact remains that in some way inexplicable to
himself Barty has influenced the world in a direction which it never
entered his thoughts even to conceive, so far as he remembered.

Think of all he has done.

He has robbed Death of nearly all its terrors; even for the young it
is no longer the grisly phantom it once was for ourselves, but
rather of an aspect mellow and benign; for to the most sceptical he
(and only he) has restored that absolute conviction of an
indestructible germ of Immortality within us, born of remembrance
made perfect and complete after dissolution: he alone has built the
golden bridge in the middle of which science and faith can shake
hands over at least one common possibility--nay, one common
certainty for those who have read him aright.

There is no longer despair in bereavement--all bereavement is but a
half parting; there is no real parting except for those who survive,
and the longest earthly life is but a span. Whatever the future may
be, the past will be ours forever,