"Hm... mmm. Yes, I am. But I'm not quite sure I follow."

"Well, neither did I at first, but I came to later on. Many evenings I talked with her, and she spoke of many other things. The last night I ever saw her, she said, My child, if you think you will find the real objects of your love outside of your own heart and mind, you will always be disappointed. Still, others must and will aid you in finding what you love, and you will aid themby drawing close to one another's hearts, and sharing with one another the secrets of your thoughts and visions. In this way people who love give to one another and draw from one another the knowledge of what love is, and of what love truly seeks."

"But Gloria, what does all this mean to us, to you and me? Where does Greg fit in?"

"I think what it means is this--" Gloria's voice was very low. She felt that by the very effort of speech, her own understanding deepened. Things that had been mysterious now stood before her plainly. "People like you and me love with something more than just what our eyes or bodies tell us. And when people love as we do, many things can happen, things that others may say are strange or even bad. We say we love a person, but what we really love is something we think we need to make our own lives perfect within ourselves; and when people deeply love each other, it is because they find in one another what they admire and need. This lifts people up, and makes them better. It is only when people love little that they can become bad or do wrongly."

John gruntled impatiently. "This is mostly up in the clouds. I have no case against theories, merely because they are theories. But you still haven't showed me how what you say applies to our situation."

"All right, John, let's get down to cases. I'll admit that what my friend told me was mostly theory, at least as far as I was concerned at first. But now, about you and Greg and I, I have it figured pretty much this way. It could have happened very differently with us three. It might have been that you were first in love with me, instead of Greg. It might have been I who was killed. It might have been I who made Greg give the promise concerning you, and then it would be Greg, not I, sitting here loving you and comforting you. Then you might have come to love the Gloria that you saw in Greg, instead of the Greg that you have seen in Gloria. It sounds confusing, but it is really very simple. What you love is something that your mind and heart need deeply-something that both Greg and I shared. That I am a woman, and he was a man have very little to do with it, nothing really, since you love in the way that you do."

"Now you're making some sense," John said slowly, after a long silence, "but I can't think too clearly about it right now, I'm afraid." He bent towards Gloria and kissed her quickly on the lips, then once more, slowly, then again and again, on her cheeks, her neck, the hollow of her shoulder . . .

t was another spring. Again the willow-trees tossed their graceful, golden branches in the cool air-branches becoming heavy with the seaon's burden of bright, tender leaves. Again John and Gloria stood on the spot which had witnessed their sadness a year ago. The grave was smooth now. Over its once-naked surface, new grass glowed green. They stood hand in hand, looking at the sailing clouds, the distant hills, the miniature outlines of the nearby town. Once, John found himself staring intently at the earth before him. Was Greg there...? He almost laughed aloud at this obvious absurdity. If Greg was anywhere, he thought, Greg was everywhere in the blue of the spring sky, in the young green of the new leaves, in the warmth of his own heart, in everything he sensed and felt. For weeks, now, he had been able to think of Greg without passion, without pain, without regret, for somehow Greg had been reborn in him. Perhaps, he had said to himself, Greg had never really died.

Gloria looked up at him suddenly, and pressed his hand. "You know," her voice was intense"people would say that there were only two of us here, but I think there are really three. I know that I never will be quite the same as Greg to you-he was the first one in your heart. But how could I be jealous of him? After all, he's a part of both of us, and I loved him too."

In the few instants that followed, John felt himself growing immeasurably from within. It was as if the appearances of life dropped away from his sight, as if he felt himself touching the fringes of life's limitless and eternal essence. First Greg, then Gloria had been wayfarers with him. in this great adventure of the spirit. Perhaps they had caught this same vision before him, but anyway it did not matter, because it was a vision in which time stood still, in which past and future were wiped out by an infinite now. He tried to find words to tell Gloria what he now saw and felt. Then, as he looked down into her luminous face, he knew that he had nothing to tell her, because this was her vision, too.

They clasped each other tightly, tenderly, with eyes half-closed, drenched by the noonday sunshine. A meadow-lark perched briefly upon a nearby tombstone, and poured into their ears and over the countryside a cascade of golden song.

END

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