It was covered with a quilt. Over the face a ragged
shawl had been thrown.'
'Yes, yes. She raised the shawl?'
'Yes, the woman went and held the candle over the head of the
mattress and uncovered the face; and there lay she whom the woman
believed to be her daughter, and whom you believe to be the young
lady you seek, but whom I _know_ to be a spiritual body--the perfect
type that was sent to me in order that I might fulfil my mission. You
groan, Mr. Aylwin, but remember that you have lost only a dream, a
beautiful hallucination; I have lost a reality: there is nothing real
but the spiritual world.
III
As I wandered about the streets after parting from Wilderspin, what
were my emotions? If I could put them into words, is there one human
being in ten thousand who would understand me? Happily, no. For there
is not one in ten thousand who, having sounded the darkest depths of
human misery, will know how strong is Hope when at the true
death-struggle with Despair. 'Hope in the human breast,' wrote my
father, 'is a passion, a wild, a lawless, and an indomitable passion,
that almost no cruelty of Fate can conquer.
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