"Mother, why did you leave me? Oh, mother, come back to me, mother, and
save my soul from hell!"



Barbara and Anthony awoke from their dream of the dreadful earth and
looked into each other's hearts.

"It is true," said their hearts, which could not lie, and with those
words all the glory of their state faded to a grey nothingness.

"You have seen and heard," said Barbara. "It was my sin which has
brought this misery on our son, who, had I lived on, might have been
saved. Now through me he is lost, who step by step of his own will must
travel downwards to the last depth, and thence, perhaps, never be raised
again. This is the thing that I have done, yes, I whom blind judges in
the world held to be good."

"I have seen and heard," he answered, "and joy has departed from me. Yet
what wrong have you worked, who did not know?"

"Come, my father," called Barbara to that spirit who in the flesh had
been named Septimus Walrond, "come, you who are holy, and pray that
light may be given to us."

So he came and prayed and from the Heavens above fell a vision in answer
to his prayer. The vision was that of the fate of the soul of the son of
Anthony and Barbara through a thousand, thousand ages that were to come,
and it was a dreadful fate.