Strange and full of wonder.  This incredible instinct for adoration—­this invincible insistence in believing, in defiance of all reason, that man was not born to die as the flesh dies.  What, after all, was the full significance of this unique phenomenon?

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live....

A loud resonant voice suddenly cut the hush with these words and immediately they were all standing.  Queed was among the first to rise; the movement was like a reflex action.  For there was something in the thrilling timbre of that voice that seemed to pull him to his feet regardless of his will; something, in fact, that impelled him to crane his neck around and peer down the dim aisle to discover immediately who was the author of it.

His eye fell on a young man advancing, clad in white robes the like of which he had never seen, and wearing the look of the morning upon his face.  In his hands he bore an open book, but he did not glance at it.  His head was thrown back; his eyes seemed fastened on something outside and beyond the church; and he rolled out the victorious words as though he would stake all that he held dearest in this world that their prophecy was true.

Whom I shall see for myself, and MINE eyes shall behold, and not another....

But behind the young man rolled a little stand on wheels, on which lay a long box banked in flowers; and though the little Doctor had never been at a funeral before, and never in the presence of death, he knew that here must lie the mortal remains of his little friend, Fifi.  From this point onward Queed’s interest in the service became, so to say, less purely scientific.

There was some antiphonal reciting, and then a long selection which the young man in robes read with the same voice of solemn triumph.  It is doubtful if anybody in the church followed him with the fascinated attention of the young evolutionist.  Soon the organ rumbled, and the little choir, standing, broke into song.

     For all the Saints who from their labors rest....

Saints!  Well, well, was it imaginable that they thought of Fifi that way already?  Why, it was only three weeks ago that he had sent her the roses and she....

A black-gloved hand, holding an open book, descended out of the dim space behind him.  It came to him, as by an inspiration, that the book was being offered for his use in some mysterious connection.  He grasped it gingerly, and his friend the motorman, jabbing at the text with a scarlet hand, whispered raucously:  “’S what they’re singin’.”  But the singers had traveled far before the young man was able to find and follow them.

     And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
     Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
     And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.