“She will come with me,” he said to himself, and his heart rose with elation.
“That is a cowardice,” he added, looking doubtfully at the card, as if wondering whether to destroy it.
“It is in the hands of God. Beatrice may or may not send word to her at Tintagel. It is in the hands of God,” he concluded.
Then he sat down again.
“ ‘But for that fear of something after-death,’ ” he quoted to himself.
“It is not fear,” he said. “The act itself will be horrible and fearsome, but the after-death—it’s no more than struggling awake when you’re sick with a fright of dreams. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made of.’ ”
Siegmund sat thinking of the after-death, which to him seemed so wonderfully comforting, full of rest, and reassurance, and renewal. He experienced no mystical ecstasies. He was sure of a wonderful kindness in death, a kindness which really reached right through life, though here he could not avail himself of it. Siegmund had always inwardly held faith that the heart of life beat kindly towards him. When he was cynical and sulky he knew that in reality it was only a waywardness of his.
The heart of life is implacable in its kindness. It may not be moved to fluttering of pity; it swings on uninterrupted by cries of anguish or of hate.
Siegmund was thankful for this unfaltering sternness of life. There was no futile hesitation between doom and pity. Therefore, he could submit and have faith. If each man by his crying could swerve the slow, sheer universe, what a doom of guilt he might gain. If
