ical conditions that had ended life were removed, could not the soul again restore it to life. If aid, food, warmth were to come, could I not live again in the body?
And so I waited. Soul kept vigil over body in that room—the two that had been linked so inextricably for thirty-one years, now divorced so irrevocably. You call it bizarre? That is because I tell it to you thus. How do you know but that it has happened times without number? You have watched by dead bodies, perhaps. How do you know that strange, invisible guest may not have shared the vigil with you?
And so I waited. Night came. The wind had died a little outside, and through the cold I heard the distant howl of wolves.
Again the howls came, and closer this time. It was a pack in full cry, spurred on by hunger, questing through the frozen solitudes for food. And now I could hear them in the clearing, and suddenly I realized what they sought.
Forgetting my impotence, I strove with desperate hands to bar the door more tightly. I seized my rifle—or tried to seize it. It was vain. Spirit has no fear from dangers of this world; equally it has no means of defense.
Round the cabin the wolves circled cautiously. I could hear them sniffing at the door.
Then one brute dashed himself against the panels. The stout frame quivered, but held. A long-drawn howl came: it thrilled me with terror. Then another clawed at the caribou-skin of the window.
A gleaming claw shot through, a pair of slavering jaws followed. In a minute they were in.
Can you dream of a thing so horrible as to watch your own body being torn apart by wild beasts?
They snarled, they fought. Their fangs clipped and tore. I grew sick with despair. The night was hideous with their snarls and yowling.
Unable to endure it, I fled. And horror tore at my heart. For now I knew I was indeed exile. The fleshly cloak that I had forsaken, that I had hoped to resume, was torn, destroyed.
I had only one wish now. To see Jane again, even though I could not speak to her, could not hold her in my arms. To see her at least, bitter as it would be, were still consolation.
There are no bounds of time or space to the unfettered soul. And I found myself, without knowing how, in that long, homelike room where we had sat so often, with the fire flaming cheerily on the great hearth, the friendly books and pictures, everything that was so good a setting for the girl I loved. In the quiet peace of it I forgot that desolate solitude, that cabin with its howling, fighting inmates.
Jane was seated reading by the window, but as I watched she laid aside the book, and sat looking out of the window across the silent, moonlit fields. And I saw two tears glide from her eyelashes, and glisten on her cheeks. She spoke my name.
That evidence of her love was more than I could bear. I knelt beside her, strove to take her in my arms, whispered a thousand broken endearments. And she sat pensive, unresponsive, utterly unconscious of me. The tragedy smote me again. I was spirit: she spirit in flesh. I was exiled.
And, with the ecstasy of despair, there flamed once more in me that dogged, unreasoning will to live—to live again. I must say.
And. with it. I fled the room, guided somehow, blindly, by a new hope.
I found myself in another house—in a bedroom that was very quiet, with an unnatural silence. In the bed lay a man. I knew him. It was my old friend, Gordon Paige.
There were others, too. Gordon's mother sat with her face in her hands.
(Continued on page 189)
