point, which is near me yet remote.
We talked last of some bygone persons I have been, some shapes she wore.
Said the Soul: 'Early in the sixteenth century you were a ragged Russian peasant girl living in ignorance and filth in a hut by a swamp-edge. You had parents both of whom beat your body black-and-blue from your babyhood. And at eighteen you were a coarsened hardy wench tending a drove of pigs and goats on the sunny steppe. I was there with you as presently as now—as sentient, as perceptive. But it is a question whether you or the little beasts you drove were the more beastly stupid. You and they were equal in outer quality, equal in uncleanliness, equally covered with vermin.'
I have no ghost-memory of that time, but as the Soul told of it a nascent feeling came on me, as if some part of my Mind felt its way back to that. I warmed to the thought of the Peasant Girl. I was quiescent to her filth and ignorance.
Said I: 'Was she brave and fairly honest?'
Said the Soul: 'You were a ready liar—you lied your way out of many a beating. But you were brave enough. You faced the roughnesses of your life uncringing, and you died game.'
Said I: 'How did I die?'
Said the Soul: 'You were run neatly through the
