It was expelled from his body. He lost
it forever. He lost, in fact, his identity. For will is personality,
soul, the ego, the man himself. And this soul, if you choose to call it
so, was driven into the air. It went away in the darkness, like a bird.
Do you see?"
He waved his hand upward, and lifted his eyes, as if following with them
the flight that he described.
"It flew away!"
"Where did it go?" ejaculated Cuckoo.
Valentine seemed suddenly to become fully aware of the depth of her
interest.
"Ah! even you are fascinated by my gospel, you who cannot understand it,"
he said. "But I cannot tell you where it went. I too have wondered."
He knit his brows rather moodily over this question of location. "I too
have wondered. But I imagine that it died; that it ceased to be. Divorced
from the body that was its home, degraded by dissatisfaction with itself,
of what use could it be to any one? Even if it still continues to be, it
is practically dead, for it can work neither harm nor good to any one,
and the thing that cannot be good or evil, or turn others towards the
one or the other, is dead. It is no more a will. It is no more an
influence. It is a heart without a pulse in it; in fact, it is nothing.
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