Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/205

 I could hear her speak; I addressed her—she answered. She was mine, I was hers. Her soul was in my soul, her thoughts truly my thoughts. I was a man, and I knew that I had been but a fragment of a man before.

“George, I am here. You know me now. No length of time so long before we are thus finally brought together that  you will forget.”

“Never! Never! Never leave me, my beloved! I cried. “Remain in my soul forever! I have no wish now to go back to earth!”

But no sooner had I given utterance to this sentiment than she was at my side again, smiling sadly.

“Oh, you must not say that,” she said. “Your life work has but begun. Do not think that this experience has been accorded you without a purpose. Nothing is without a purpose. Marriage is most grossly misunderstood by you mortals. It is to be your work to write of this and other strange experiences through which you are passing, so that  those who care to read may know something of the truth.”

“Come to me again!” I cried. “That taste of bliss makes me long for more! Come, my love—my wife!”

She shook her head and smiled.

“Not again, George. You have other duties to perform, as I have said. As it is your life cord was almost severed—you can see it there behind you, trailing like a silver thread.”

But I had already seen it and did not even turn to look. I begged and pleaded until she bade me desist with a certain positiveness of manner which I did not altogether fancy. This she seemed to understand.

“You see,” she said, “there is not true harmony between us yet; there cannot be until you have crossed the border. The veil still divides us, George.”

“Can you not tear it aside and show me the spirit world?”

“No—oh no! That cannot be.”

“But if I am a spirit, why not?”

“You are not a spirit in the word’s full sense. Let that silver cord be severed and you would quickly see the spirit  world, but that would be a calamity.”

“Why a calamity?”

“It is a calamity for any man to leave earth life with his work unfinished. But I must now leave you. George, my love, my husband, my soul’s true mate, I go, but I shall  come once again. Farewell!”