If I try (said his afflicted wife), to divert him from these things⁠—to raise his thoughts to higher themes, it is no better:⁠—“Worse and worse!” he groans. “If there be really life beyond the tomb, and judgment after death, how can I face it?”⁠—I cannot do him any good; he will neither be enlightened, nor roused, nor comforted by anything I say; and yet he clings to me with unrelenting pertinacity⁠—with a kind of childish desperation, as if I could save him from the fate he dreads. He keeps me night and day beside him. He is holding my left hand now, while I write; he has held it thus for hours: sometimes quietly, with his pale face upturned to mine: sometimes clutching my arm with violence⁠—the big drops starting from his forehead at the thoughts of what he sees, or thinks he sees, before him. If I withdraw my hand for a moment it distresses him.

“Stay with me, Helen,” he says; “let me hold you so: it seems as if harm could not reach me while you are here. But death will come⁠—it is coming now⁠—fast, fast!⁠—and⁠—oh, if I could believe there was nothing after!”

“Don’t try to believe it, Arthur; there is joy and glory after, if you will but try to reach it!”

“What, for me?” he said, with something like a laugh. “Are we not to be judged according to the deeds done in the body? Where’s the use of a probationary existence, if a man may spend it as he pleases, just contrary to God’s decrees, and then go to heaven with the best⁠—if the vilest sinner may win the reward of the holiest saint, by merely saying, ‘I repent!’

“Don’t try to believe it, Arthur; there is joy and glory after, if you will but try to reach it!”