_She_. But have you never forgotten the body, dreamed what it would be
to feel God? You have known those moments when your soul, losing the
sense of contact with men or women, groped alone, in an enveloping
calm, and knew content. I have had it in times of intoxication from
music--not the personal, passionate music of to-day, but some one or
two notes that sink the mazy present into darkness. I knew that my
senses were gone for the time, and in their place I held a comfortable
consciousness of power. There have been other times--in Lent, at the
close of the drama of Christ--beside the sea--after a long
dance--illusory moments when one forgot the body and wondered.
_He._ I know. One night in the Sierras we camped high up above the
summits of the range. The altitude, perhaps, or the long ride through
the forest, kept me awake. Our fires died down; a chalky mist rose from
the valleys, and, filtering through the ravines, at last capped the
granite heads. The smouldering tree-trunks we had lit for fires and the
little patch of rock where we lay, made an island in that white sea.
Between us and the black spaces among the stars there was nothing. How
eternally quiet it was! I can feel that isolation now coming over my
soul like the stealthy fog, until I lay there, unconscious of my body,
in a wondering placidity, watching the stars burn and fade. I could
seem to feel them whirl in their way through the heavens. And then a
thought detached itself from me, the conception of an eternity passed
in placidity like that without the pains of sense, the obligations of
action; I loved it then--that cold residence of thought!
_She._ You have known it, too. Those moments when the body in life
feels the state of spirit come rarely and awe one. Dear heart, perhaps
if our spirits were purified and experienced we should welcome that
perpetual contemplation. We cannot be Janus-faced, but the truth may
lie with the monks, who killed this life in order to obtain a grander
one.