mantle."
And I took up my mantle and followed where God called me; but I looked
back, and I saw the crown burning, my crown that I had loved.
Higher and higher we climbed, and the air grew thinner. Not a tree or
plant was on the bare rocks, and the stillness was unbroken. My breath
came hard and quick, and the blood crept within my finger-tips. I said to
God, "Is this Heaven?"
God said, "Yes; it is the highest."
And still we climbed. I said to God, "I cannot breathe so high."
God said, "Because the air is pure?"
And my head grew dizzy, and as I climbed the blood burst from my finger-
tips.
Then we came out upon a lonely mountain-top.
No living being moved there; but far off on a solitary peak I saw a lonely
figure standing. Whether it were man or
woman I could not tell; for partly
it seemed the figure of a
woman, but its limbs were the mighty limbs of a
man. I asked God whether it was man or
woman.
God said, "In the least Heaven sex reigns supreme; in the higher it is not
noticed; but in the highest it does not exist."
And I saw the figure bend over its work, and labour mightily, but what it
laboured at I could not see.
I said to God, "How came it here?"
God said, "By a bloody stair. Step by step it mounted from the lowest
Hell, and day by day as Hell grew farther and Heaven no nearer, it hung
alone between two worlds. Hour by hour in that bitter struggle its limbs
grew larger, till there fell from it rag by rag the garments which it
started with. Drops fell from its eyes as it strained them; each step it
climbed was wet with blood. Then it came out here."
And I thought of the garden where men sang with their arms around one
another; and the mountain-side where they worked in company. And I
shuddered.
And I said, "Is it not terribly alone here?"
God said, "It is never alone!"
I said, "What has it for all its labour? I see nothing return to it."
Then God touched my eyes, and I saw stretched out beneath us the plains of
Heaven and Hell, and all that was within them.
God said, "From that lone height on which he stands, all things are open.
