Now I have this power.  Occasionally when I am in deep sleep some part of me seems to leave my body and to be transported quite outside the world.  It travels, as though I were already dead, to the Gates that all who live must pass, and there takes its stand, on the Great White Road, watching those who have been called speed by continually.  Those upon the earth know nothing of that Road.  Blinded by their pomps and vanities, they cannot see, they will not see it always growing towards the feet of every one of them.  But I see and know.  Of course you who read will say that this is but a dream of mine, and it may be.  Still, if so, it is a very wonderful dream, and except for the change of the passing people, or rather of those who have been people, always very much the same.

There, straight as the way of the Spirit and broad as the breast of Death, is the Great White Road running I know not whence, up to those Gates that gleam like moonlight and are higher than the Alps.  There beyond the Gates the radiant Presences move mysteriously.  Thence at the appointed time the Voice cries and they are opened with a sound like to that of deepest thunder, or sometimes are burned away, while from the Glory that lies beyond flow the sweet-faced welcomers to greet those for whom they wait, bearing the cups from which they give to drink.  I do not know what is in the cups, whether it be a draught of Lethe or some baptismal water of new birth, or both; but always the thirsting, world-worn soul appears to change, and then as it were to be lost in the Presence that gave the cup.  At least they are lost to my sight.  I see them no more.

Why do I watch those Gates, in truth or in dream, before my time?  Oh!  You can guess.  That perchance I may behold those for whom my heart burns with a quenchless, eating fire.  And once I beheld—­not the mother but the child, my child, changed indeed, mysterious, wonderful, gleaming like a star, with eyes so deep that in their depths my humanity seemed to swoon.

She came forward; she knew me; she smiled and laid her finger on her lips.  She shook her hair about her and in it vanished as in a cloud.  Yet as she vanished a voice spoke in my heart, her voice, and the words it said were—­

“Wait, our Beloved!  Wait!”

Mark well.  “Our Beloved,” not “My Beloved.”  So there are others by whom I am beloved, or at least one other, and I know well who that one must be.

*****

After this dream, perhaps I had better call it a dream, I was ill for a long while, for the joy and the glory of it overpowered me and brought me near to the death I had always sought.  But I recovered, for my hour is not yet.  Moreover, for a long while as we reckon time, some years indeed, I obeyed the injunction and sought the Great White Road no more.  At length the longing grew too strong for me and I returned thither, but never again did the vision come.  Its word was spoken, its mission was fulfilled.  Yet from time to time I, a mortal, seem to stand upon the borders of that immortal Road and watch the newly dead who travel it towards the glorious Gates.