I had loved them tenderly. Had they passed out of my life? I
felt bewildered.
Amroth laid a hand on my arm and smiled again. "No, you came near to
some of them again. Do you not remember another life in which you loved
a friend with a strange love, that surprised you by its nearness? He had
been your child long before; and one never quite loses that."
I saw in a flash the other life he spoke of. I was a student, it seemed,
at some university, where there was a boy of my own age, a curious,
wilful, perverse, tactless creature, always saying and doing the wrong
thing, for whom I had felt a curious and unreasonable responsibility. I
had always tried to explain him to other people, to justify him; and he
had turned to me fop help and companionship in a singular way. I saw
myself walking with him in the country, expostulating, gesticulating;
and I saw him angry and perplexed.... The vision vanished.
"But what becomes of all those whom we have loved?" I said; "it cannot
be as if we had never loved them."
"No, indeed," said Amroth, "they are all there or here; but there lies
one of the great mysteries which we cannot yet attain to.
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