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I was too absorbed to say anything else

It seemed my consciousness was flooded with the smell of the wood and all its dark colors, the endlessly rich variations of brown and gold and deep red that surrounded us I peered up at the sky, at the shining light fractured and gray and sullen yet grand

Yet all I could think and consider was the ind, and the souls who had surrounded us in the ind as though the air from the earth to Heaven were filled with huo in such darkness? What does one seek?What can one know?

Was Me? It sounded small and

softly, as if the hts It ca, the sound of angels

"Me but I couldn't stand it any longer "Did God know it?" I asked "Did God know that men and women had evolved spiritual essences? Did he know, Memnoch, about their souls?"

He didn't answer

Again I heard the faint sound, his song He, too, was looking up at

the sky, and he was singingcanticle, it seeanized music, yet full of eloquence and pain

He watched the cloudsabove us, as heavy and white as any clouds I'd ever beheld

Did this beauty of the forest rival what I had seen in Heaven?

Impossible to answer But what I kneith perfect truth is that heaven bad not made this beauty die Garden, this possible Eden, this ancient place was ht and in its own splendid limitations I suddenly couldn't bear to look on it, to see the s it, without the answer to my question

Nothing in the whole of my life seemed as essential

"Did God know about the souls, Memnoch!" I said "Did He know!"

He turned to me