"I suppose it was pain," I said.

For always, when anything revives this recollection, seared into my
memory, the question rises: was it merely pain, physical pain, of which
we all speak so easily and lightly? It lasted only ten minutes; ten
minutes by the clock, that is. For me time was annihilated. There was no
past or future, but only an intolerable present, in which mind and soul
were blotted out, and all of sentient existence that remained was the
animal consciousness of agony. I cannot share men's stoical contempt
for a Gehenna, which is nothing worse.

"Mr. Lyndsay, imagine pain, worse than any ever endured on earth going
on and on, for ever!"

A bird, not a thrush, but one of the minor singers, lighting on a bough
near us, trilled one simple but ecstatic phrase.

"Do you really and truly believe, Mrs. Mostyn, that this will be the
fate of any single being?"

"Of any single being? Do we not know that it is what will happen to the
greatest number? For what does the Book say? 'Many are called but few
are chosen.'"

Through the still, mild air, across the sun-steeped gardens, came the
voices of the children--

"Aunt Eleanour! Aunt Eleanour!"

"Many are called," she repeated, "but few are chosen; and those who are