The Works of "Fiona Macleod", Volume IV

"Create what?"

"A new environment for its need? Drown it in the deepest gulfs of the sea, and it will, at the moment it is freed from the body, sheathe itself in a like shape, and habit itself with free spaces of air, so that it may breathe, and live, and emerge into the atmosphere, there to take on a new shape, to involve itself in new circumstances, to live anew?"

"It is possible. But would that sea-change leave the mind the same or another?"

"The Mind would come forth one and incorruptible."

"If in truth, the Mind be an indivisible essence?"

"Yes, if the mind be one and indivisible."

"You believe it so?"

"Tell me, are you insubstantial? You, yourself, below this accident of mortality?"

"I know not what you mean."

"You were wondering if, after all, it were possible for me to have a life, a conscious, individual continuity, apart from this mortal substance in which you and I now share – counterparts of that human home we both love and hate, that moving tent of the Illimitable, which at birth appears a speck on sands of the Illimitable, and at death again abruptly disappears. You were wondering this. But, tell me: have you yourself never wondered how you can exist, as yourself, apart from something of this very actuality, this form, this materialism to which you find yourself so alien in the Body?"

"I am spirit. I am a breath."

"But you are you?"

"Yes, I am I."

"The surpassing egotism is the same, whether in you, the Soul, who are but a breath; or in me, the Will, who am but a condition; or in our brother, the Body, a claimant to Eternal Life while perishing in his mortality!"

"I live in God. Whence I came, thither shall I return."

"A breath?"

"It may be."

"Yet you shall be you?"

"Yes; I."

"Then that breath which will be you must have form, even as the Body must have form."

"Form is but the human formula for the informulate."

"Nay, Form is life."

"You have ever one wish, it seems to me, O Will: to put upon me the heavy yoke of mortality."

"Not so: but to lift it from myself."

"And the Body?"

"Where did you leave him last night?"

"You remember what he said about the Three Companions of Night: Laughter, and Wine, and Love? I left him with these."

"They are also called Tears, and Weariness, and the Grave. He has his portion. Perhaps he does well. Death intercepts many retributions."

"He, too, has his dream within a dream."

"Yes, you played to it, in the silence and the darkness."

"You heard my playing – you here, I there?"

"I heard."

"And did you sleep or wake, comforted?"

"I heard a Wind. I have heard it often. I heard, too, my own voice singing in the dark."

"What was the song?"

"This: —

In the silences of the woods
I have heard all day and all night
The moving multitudes
Of the Wind in flight.
He is named Myriad:
And I am sad
Often, and often I am glad;
But oftener I am white
With fear of the dim broods
That are his multitudes."

"And then, when you had heard that song?"

"There was a rush of wings. My hair streamed behind me. Then a sudden stillness, out of which came moonlight; and a star fell slowly through the dark, and as it passed my face I felt lips pressed against mine, and it seemed to me that you kissed me."

"And when I kissed you, did I whisper any word?"

"You whispered: 'I am the Following Love.'"

"And you knew then that it was the Breath of God, and you had deep peace, and slept?"

"I knew that it was the Following Love, – that is the Breath of God, and I had deep peace, and I slept."

The Soul crossed from the window to the bed, and stooped, and kissed the Will.

"Beloved," he whispered, "the star was but a dewdrop of the Peace that passeth understanding. And can it be that to you, to whom the healing dew was vouchsafed, shall be denied the water-springs?"