“Or, to speak more truly,” he replied, “the union of two souls in heaven, into an eternal oneness.  Yes, that was the subject, and it always interests me deeply.  Our life here is but a span, and our brief union shadowed by care, pain, sickness, and the never-dying fear of parting.  The sky of our being is not unclouded long.  And therefore I cannot believe that the blessedness of married love dies forever at the end of this struggle to come into perfect form and beauty.  No, Doctor; the end is not here.  And so Blanche and I turn often with an eager delight to these relations, feeling, as we read, that they are not mere pictures of fancy, but heavenly verities.  They teach us that if we would be united in the next world, we must become purified in this.  That selfish love, which is of the person must give place to a love for spiritual qualities.  That we must grow in the likeness and image of God, if we would make one angel in His heavenly kingdom.”

His eyes rested upon Blanche, as he closed the sentence, with a look full of love; and she, as if she knew that the glance was coming, turned and received it into her heart.

I did not question the faith that carried them over the bounds of time, and gave them delicious foreshadowings of the blessedness beyond.  As I looked at them, and marked how they seemed to grow daily into a oneness of spirit, could I doubt that there was for them an eternal union?  No, no.  Such doubts would have been false to the instincts of my own soul, and false to the instincts of every conscious being made to love and be loved.

“The laying aside of this earthly investiture,” said Wallingford, resuming, “the passage from mortal to immortal life, cannot change our spirits, but only give to all their powers a freer and more perfect development.  Love is not a quality of the body, but of the spirit, and will remain in full force, after the body is cast off like the shell of a chrysalis.  Still existing, it will seek its object.  And shall it seek forever and not find?  God forbid!  No!  The love I bear my wife is not, I trust, all of the earth, earthy; but instinct with a heavenly perpetuity.  And when we sleep the sleep of death, it will be in the confident assurance of a speedy and more perfect conjunction of our lives.  On a subject of such deep concern, we are dissatisfied with the vague and conjectural; and this is why the record of things seen and heard in the spiritual world by Swedenborg—­especially in what relates to marriages in heaven—­has for us such an absorbing interest.”

“Are you satisfied with the evidence?” I ventured to inquire, seeing him so confident.

“Yes.”

He answered quietly, and with an assured manner.

“How do you reach a conclusion as to the truth of these things?”

“Something after the same way that you satisfy yourself that the sun shines.”

“My eyes testify to me that fact.  Seeing is believing,” I answered.