joy and sure conviction which makes the so-called separation a
temporary test, perhaps, but never a final blow. What are the few
years of separation compared to this certainty of co-operation in
eternity? We live but a few years together in the flesh, yet if those
few are lived with beauty and beautifully, the tie is unalterably
forged which fastens us lovingly together for ever. Where, how,
under what precise conditions it were idle to enquire and
unnecessary--the wrong way too. Our only knowledge (in the scientific
sense) comes to us through our earthly senses. To forecast our future
life, constructing it of necessity upon this earthly sensory
experience, is an occupation for those who have neither faith nor
imagination. All such "heavens" are but clumsy idealizations of the
present--"Happy Hunting Grounds" in various forms: whereas we know
that if we lived beauty together, we shall live it always
--"afterwards," as our poor time-ridden language phrases it. For
Beauty, once known, cannot exclude us. We cooperated with the Power
that makes the universe alive.

And, knowing this, I do not ask for your "return," or for any
so-called evidence that you survive. In beauty you both live now with
less hampered hands, less troubled breath, and I am glad.

Why should you come, indeed, through the gutter of my worn, familiar,
personal desires, when the open channel of beauty lies ever at the
flood for you to use? Coming in this way, you come, besides, for
many, not for me alone, since behind every thrill of beauty stand the
countless brave souls who lived it in their lives. They have entered
the mighty rhythm that floats the spiral nebulae in space, as it turns
the little aspiring Nautilus in the depths of the sea. Having once
felt this impersonal worship which is love of beauty, they are linked