a great chain of lives, that each spirit lives many times, over and over.  There is no such thing as waste or sacrifice of life.  The life is meant to do just what it does, no more and no less; bound in the body, it all seems so long or so short, so complete or so incomplete; but now and here we can see that the whole thing is so endless, so immense, that we think no more of entering life, say, for a few days, or entering it for ninety years, than we should think of counting one or ninety water-drops in the river that pours in a cataract over the lip of the rocks.  Where we do lose, in life, is in not taking the particular experience, be it small or great, to heart.  We try to forget things, to put them out of our minds, to banish them.  Of course it is very hard to do otherwise, in a body so finite, tossed and whirled in a stream so infinite; and thus we are happiest if we can live very simply and quietly, not straining to multiply our uneasy activities, but just getting the most and the best out of the elements of life as they come to us.  As we get older in spirit, we do that naturally; the things that men call ambitions and schemes are the signs of immaturity; and when we grow older, those slip off us and concern us no more; while the real vitality of feeling and emotion runs ever more clear and strong.”

“But,” I said, “can one revive the old lives at will?  Can one look back into the long range of previous lives?  Is that permitted?”

“Yes, of course it is permitted,” said Amroth, smiling; “there are no rules here; but one does not care to do it overmuch.  One is just glad it is all done, and that one has learnt the lesson.  Look back if you like—­there are all the lives behind you.”

I had a curious sensation—­I saw myself suddenly a stalwart savage, strangely attired for war, near a hut in a forest clearing.  I was going away somewhere; there were other huts at hand; there was a fire, in the side of a mound, where some women seemed to be cooking something and wrangling over it; the smoke went up into the still air.  A child came out of the hut, and ran to me.  I bent down and kissed it, and it clung to me.  I was sorry, in a dim way, to be going out—­for I saw other figures armed too, standing about the clearing.  There was to be fighting that day, and though I wished to fight, I thought I might not return.  But the mind of myself, as I discerned it, was full of hurtful, cruel, rapacious thoughts, and I was sad to think that this could ever have been I.

“It is not very nice,” said Amroth with a smile; “one does not care to revive that!  You were young then, and had much before you.”

Another picture flashed into the mind.  Was it true?  I was a woman, it seemed, looking out of a window on the street in a town with high, dark houses, strongly built of stone:  there was a towered gate at a little distance, with some figures drawing up sacks with a pulley to a door in the gate.  A man came up behind me, pulled me roughly back, and spoke angrily; I answered him fiercely and shrilly.  The room I was in seemed to be a shop or store; there were barrels of wine, and bags of corn.  I felt that I was busy and anxious—­it was not a pleasant retrospect.