‘That is death indeed,’ she cried; and the wind came up silent with a wild breath that was more awful than the shriek of a storm: for it was like the stifled utterances of all those miserable ones who have no voice to call upon God, and know not where He is nor how to pronounce His name.
‘Ah,’ said he, ‘if we could have known what death was! We had believed in death in the time of all great illusions, in the time of the gentle life, in the day of hope. But in the land of darkness there are no illusions, and every man knows that though he should fling himself into the furnace of the gold, or be cut to pieces by the knives, or trampled under the dancers’ feet, yet that it will be but a little more pain, and that death is not, nor any escape that way.’
‘Oh, brother!’ she cried, ‘you have been there!’
He turned and looked upon her, and she read as in a book things which tongue of man cannot say--the anguish and the rapture, the unforgotten pang of the lost, the joy of one who has been delivered after hope was gone.
‘I have been there: and now I stand in the light, and have seen the face of the Lord, and can speak His blessed name.’ And with that he burst forth into a great melodious cry, which was not like that which he had sent into the dark depths below, but mounted up like the sounding of silver trumpets and all joyful music, giving a voice to the sweet air and the fresh winds which blew about the hills of God. But the words he said were not comprehensible to his companion, for they were in the sweet tongue which is between the Father and His child, and known to none but to them alone. Yet only to hear the sound was enough to transport all who listened, and to make them know what joy is and peace. The little pilgrim wept for happiness to hear her brother’s voice. But in the midst of it her ear was caught by another sound--a faint cry which tingled up from the darkness like a note of a muffled bell--and she turned from the joy and the light, and flung out her arms and her little voice towards him who was stumbling upon the dark mountains. And ‘Come,’ she cried, ‘Come, come!’ forgetting all things save that one was there in the darkness, while here was light and peace.