A moment later there came the cry of a new-born child from the window above.  The doctor came out and went down the street; one of the women joined him and walked with him.  A few minutes later she returned with a young and sturdy workman, looking rather anxious.

“It’s all right,” I heard her say, “it’s a fine boy, and Annie is doing well—­she’ll be about again soon enough.”

They disappeared into the house, and I turned away.

XXXV

It is difficult to describe the strange emotions with which the departure of Amroth filled me.  I think that, when I first entered the heavenly country, the strongest feeling I experienced was the sense of security—­the thought that the earthly life was over and done with, and that there remained the rest and tranquillity of heaven.  What I cannot even now understand is this.  I am dimly aware that I have lived a great series of lives, in each of which I have had to exist blindly, not knowing that my life was not bounded and terminated by death, and only darkly guessing and hoping, in passionate glimpses, that there might be a permanent life of the soul behind the life of the body.  And yet, at first, on entering the heavenly country, I did not remember having entered it before; it was not familiar to me, nor did I at first recall in memory that I had been there before.  The earthly life seems to obliterate for a time even the heavenly memory.  But the departure of Amroth swept away once and for all the sense of security.  One felt of the earthly life, indeed, as a busy man may think of a troublesome visit he has to pay, which breaks across the normal current of his life, while he anticipates with pleasure his return to the usual activities of home across the interval of social distraction, which he does not exactly desire, but yet is glad that it should intervene, if only for the heightened sense of delight with which he will resume his real life.  I had been happy in heaven, though with periods of discontent and moments of dismay.  But I no longer desired a dreamful ease; I only wished passionately to be employed.  And now I saw that I must resign all expectation of that.  As so often happens, both on earth and in heaven, I had found something of which I was not in search, while the work which I had estimated so highly, and prepared myself so ardently for, had never been given to me to do at all.

But for the moment I had but one single thought.  I was to see Cynthia again, and I might then expect my own summons to return to life.  What surprised me, on looking back at my present sojourn, was the extreme apparent fortuitousness of it.  It had not been seemingly organised or laid out on any plan; and yet it had shown me this, that my own intentions and desires counted for nothing.  I had meant to work, and I had been mostly idle; I had intended to study psychology, and I had found love.  How much wiser and deeper it had all been than anything which I had designed!