We turned to these things, not because they were grateful or
pleasing to remember, but because it seemed to _establish_ us, or rather
me, to give me identity, and build up the growing certainty that I had
come from the earth, and was re-embodied in this new sphere of active
feeling and experience.
"I told him of you, of the death of your mother, of our flight to New
Zealand, our experiments, the Dodans, and then turning to him, as we saw
the Martian moon rise in ruddy fullness far away over the hill of
_Tiniti_, I said, searchingly: 'Chapman, you remember Martha? How
beautiful and good she was! I have kept one long, sad, and still
deathless hope in my repining heart. I shall see her again! It must be!
I have felt so certain of this that no argument, no appeal to reason,
can drive away the keen sense of its realization. Have you seen her on
Mars amongst the thousands you have met, and is there on this entrancing
orb any other place than the Hill of the Phosphori, for the disembodied
of other worlds to enter this new world?
"Chapman smiled. 'Yes,' he answered, 'I remember your wife very well. I
could pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet in
the City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion,
and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelings
have a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughing
skepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them.
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