Leave me! Leave me!" he cried in
frantic bitterness. "Give me back what I have lost, or give me nothing."
For the soul's fierce cry for immortality is this--only this: Return to me
after death the thing as it was before. Leave me in the Hereafter the
being that I am today. Rob me of the thoughts, the feelings, the desires
that are my life, and you have left nothing to take. Your immortality is
annihilation, your Hereafter is a lie.
Waldo flung open the door, and walked out into the starlight, his pain-
stricken thoughts ever driving him on as he paced there.
"There must be a Hereafter because man longs for it!" he whispered. "Is
not all life from the cradle to the grave one long yearning for that which
we never touch? There must be a Hereafter because we cannot think of any
end to life. Can we think of a beginning? Is it easier to say 'I was not'
than to say 'I shall not be'? And yet, where were we ninety years ago?
Dreams, dreams! Ah, all dreams and lies! No ground anywhere."
He went back into the cabin and walked there. Hour after hour passed, and
he was dreaming.
For, mark you, men will dream; the most that can be asked of them is but
that the dream be not in too glaring discord with the thing they know. He
walked with bent head.
All dies, all dies! the roses are red with the matter that once reddened
the cheek of the child; the flowers bloom the fairest on the last year's
battleground; the work of death's finger cunningly wreathed over is at the
heart of all things, even of the living.
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