felt bewildered.

Amroth laid a hand on my arm and smiled again. "No, you came near to
some of them again. Do you not remember another life in which you loved
a friend with a strange love, that surprised you by its nearness? He had
been your child long before; and one never quite loses that."

I saw in a flash the other life he spoke of. I was a student, it seemed,
at some university, where there was a boy of my own age, a curious,
wilful, perverse, tactless creature, always saying and doing the wrong
thing, for whom I had felt a curious and unreasonable responsibility. I
had always tried to explain him to other people, to justify him; and he
had turned to me fop help and companionship in a singular way. I saw
myself walking with him in the country, expostulating, gesticulating;
and I saw him angry and perplexed.... The vision vanished.

"But what becomes of all those whom we have loved?" I said; "it cannot
be as if we had never loved them."

"No, indeed," said Amroth, "they are all there or here; but there lies
one of the great mysteries which we cannot yet attain to. We shall be
all brought together some time, closely and perfectly; but even now, in
the world of matter, the spirit half remembers; and when one is
strangely and lovingly drawn to another soul, when that love is not of
the body, and has nothing of passion in it, then it is some close
ancient tie reasserting itself. Do you not know how old and remote some
of our friendships seemed--so much older and larger than could be
accounted for by the brief days of companionship? That strange hunger
for the past of one we love is nothing but the faint memory of what has
been. Indeed, when you have rested happily a little longer, you will