“With what a dreadfully scientific spirit you dissect a fantasy!  Perhaps you might understand if you recall what sometimes happens before sleep.  At first you see pictures of things, landscapes, people you know; after a time people and places unknown before begin to mingle with them in an ever-widening circle of visions; the light on which these things are pictured is universal, though everyone has around himself his own special sphere of light; this is the mirror of himself—­his memory; but as we go deeper into ourselves in introspection we see beyond our special sphere into the great of universal light, the memorial tablet of nature; there lie hidden the secrets of the past; and so, as Felix said a little while ago, we can call up and renew the life of legend and tradition.  This is the Astral Light of the mystics.  Its deeper and more living aspect seems to inflame the principle of desire in us.  All the sweet, seductive, bewitching temptations of sense are inspired by it.  After death the soul passing into this living light goes on thinking, thinking, goes on aspiring, aspiring, creating unconsciously around itself its own circumstance in which all sweetest desires are self-fulfilled.  When this dream-power is exhausted the soul returns again to earth.  With some this return is due to the thirst for existence; with some to a perception of the real needs of soul.”

“Do you really believe all that?”

“Oh, yes!  But that is only a general statement.”

“I wonder at your capacity for believing in these invisible spheres.  As for me I cannot go beyond the world I live in.  When I think of these things some dreadful necessity seems heaped upon me to continue here—­or, as you might put it, an angel with a flaming sword keeps everywhere the avenues to the Tree of Life.”

“Oh!” said Willie, “it seems to me a most reasonable theory.  After all, what else could the soul do after death but think itself out?  It has no body to move about in.  I am going to dream over it now.  Good-night!”

He turned into the tent and Robert followed him.  “Well, I cannot rest yet,” said Bryan, “I am going up for a little to the top of the hill.  Come, Felix, these drowsy fellows are going to hide themselves from the face of night.”  We went up, and leaning on a boulder of rock looked out together.  Away upon the dream-built margin of space a thousand tremors fled and chased each other all along the shadowy night.  The human traditions, memories of pain, struggle, hope and desire floated away and melted in the quietude until at last only the elemental consciousness remained at gaze.  I felt chilled by the vacancies.  I wondered what this void was to Bryan.  I wished to see with his eyes.  His arm was around my shoulder.  How I loved him—­my nearest—­my brother!  The fierce and tender flame, comrade to his spirit, glowed in my heart.  I felt a commingling of nature, something moved before my eyes.