When I told him exactly what had happened and repeated the words that Natalie spoke, he was much interested in his own nebulous way, and said that it was delightful to meet with an example of a good Christian, such as my wife had been, who actually saw something of Heaven before she had gone there.  His own faith was, he thanked God, fairly robust, but still an undoubted occurrence of the sort acted as a refreshment, “like rain on a pasture when it is rather dry, you know,” he added, breaking into simile.

I remarked that she had not seemed to speak in the sense he indicated, but appeared to allude to something quite near at hand and more or less immediate.

“I don’t know that there is anything nearer at hand than the Hereafter,” he answered.  “I expect she meant that you will probably soon die and join her in Paradise, if you are worthy to do so.  But of course it is not wise to put too much reliance upon words spoken by people at the last, because often they don’t quite know what they are saying.  Indeed sometimes I think this was so in the case of my own wife, who really seemed to me to talk a good deal of rubbish.  Good-bye, I promised to see Widow Jenkins this afternoon about having her varicose veins cut out, and I mustn’t stop here wasting time in pleasant conversation.  She thinks just as much of her varicose veins as we do of the loss of our wives.”

I wonder what Bastin’s ideas of unpleasant conversation may be, thought I to myself, as I watched him depart already wool-gathering on some other subject, probably the heresy of one of those “early fathers” who occupied most of his thoughts.

Bickley listened to my tale in sympathetic silence, as a doctor does to a patient.  When he was obliged to speak, he said that it was interesting as an example of a tendency of certain minds towards romantic vision which sometimes asserts itself, even in the throes of death.

“You know,” he added, “that I put faith in none of these things.  I wish that I could, but reason and science both show me that they lack foundation.  The world on the whole is a sad place, where we arrive through the passions of others implanted in them by Nature, which, although it cares nothing for individual death, is tender towards the impulse of races of every sort to preserve their collective life.  Indeed the impulse is Nature, or at least its chief manifestation.  Consequently, whether we be gnats or elephants, or anything between and beyond, even stars for aught I know, we must make the best of things as they are, taking the good and the evil as they come and getting all we can out of life until it leaves us, after which we need not trouble.  You had a good time for a little while and were happy in it; now you are having a bad time and are wretched.  Perhaps in the future, when your mental balance has re-asserted itself, you will have other good times in the afternoon of your days, and then follow twilight and the dark.  That is all there is to hope for,