Page:An Agnostic's Progress by Catherine Helen Spence.pdf/4

body indeed lay inside; but the soul, the breath, the life, had departed. Nothing remained for the survivors but to cover up or destroy what had been but a moment ago fraught with beauty, or energy, or love; or perhaps powerful for evil, and threatening death or destruction. Once the vital principle had crossed the dividing wall, the envelope began to decay, and neither love nor hate, hope nor fear, concerned it more.

The openings were sometimes so sudden that the victim was snatched away without his having any idea of it, or his friends suspecting his danger; but in the generality of cases there was an irresistible attraction which slowly and gradually drew him away from his business or his pleasures, which enfeeble his senses, lessened his enjoyments and increased his pains, so as to make his departure less regretful. It mattered not where the doomed man was situated. He might be hundreds of miles from the boundary wall, and fancy that he had a long life before him; but from the Beyond the fiat went forth, and he was dragged with more or less rapidity to the fatal circle. Bystanders wished him a kind reception on the other side; and there were some who made a business of trying to drag him back with charms and potions and unguents, and who stood watching