“I call it a perfect outrage,” I said.  “What is the meaning of this hateful business?”

“The meaning?” said Amroth; “never mind about the meaning.  The point is that you are here!”

“Oh,” I said, “I have had a horrible time.  All my sense of security is gone from me.  Is one indeed liable to this kind of interruption, Amroth?”

“Of course,” said Amroth, “there must be some tests; but you will be better very soon.  It is all over for the present, I may tell you, and you will soon be able to enjoy it.  There is no terror in past suffering—­it is the purest joy.”

“Yes, I used to say so and think so,” I said, closing my eyes.  “But this was different—­it was horrible!  And the time it lasted, and the despair of it!  It seems to have soaked into my whole life and poisoned it.”

Amroth said nothing for a minute, but watched me closely.

Presently I went on.  “And tell me one thing.  There was a ghastly thing I saw, some mouldering bones on a ledge.  Can people indeed fall and die there?”

“Perhaps it was only a phantom,” said Amroth, “put there like the sights in the Pilgrim’s Progress, the fire that was fed secretly with oil, and the robin with his mouth full of spiders, as an encouragement for wayfarers!”

“But that,” I said, “would be too horrible for anything—­to turn the terrors of death into a sort of conjuring trick—­a dramatic entertainment, to make one’s flesh creep!  Why, that was the misery of some of the religion taught us in old days, that it seemed often only dramatic—­a scene without cause or motive, just displayed to show us the anger or the mercy of God, so that one had the miserable sense that much of it was a spectacular affair, that He Himself did not really suffer or feel indignation, but thought it well to feign emotions, like a schoolmaster to impress his pupils.—­and that people too were not punished for their own sakes, to help them, but just to startle or convince others.”

“Yes,” said Amroth, “I was only jesting, and I see that my jests were out of place.  Of course what you saw was real—­there are no pretences here.  Men and women do indeed suffer a kind of death—­the second death—­in these places, and have to begin again; but that is only for a certain sort of self-confident and sin-soaked person, whose will needs to be roughly broken.  There are certain perverse sins of the spirit which need a spiritual death, as the sins of the body need a bodily death.  Only thus can one be born again.”

“Well,” I said, “I am amazed—­but now what am I to do?  I am fit for nothing, and I shall be fit for nothing hereafter.”

“If you talk like this,” said Amroth, “you will only drive me away.  There are certain things that it is better not to confess to one’s dearest friend, not even to God.  One must just be silent about them, try to forget them, hope they can never happen again.  I tell you, you will soon be all right; and if you are not you will have to see a physician.  But you had better not do that unless you are obliged.”