"I can't go back across the sea and settle down at home while this war
goes on!" she said. "Home just wouldn't be _home_. It's too far away
from Jim. I don't mean from his _body_," she went on. "His body isn't
_Jim_, I know! I've thought that out, and made myself realize the truth
of it. But it's Jim's spirit I'm talking about, Father. I guess his
soul--Jim himself--won't care to be flitting back and forth, crossing
the ocean to visit us, while his friends are fighting in France and
Belgium, to save the world. I know my boy well enough to be sure he's
too strong to change much just because he is what some folks call
'dead'; and he'd like us to be near. Paris won't do for me. No city
would. I'd be too restless there. Do, _do_ let's go and live till the
end of the war in Jim's chateau! That's what he's wanting. I feel it
every minute."
I was in the room when she made this appeal to her husband, and I longed
to put into their hearts the thought Jack Curtis had put into mine. But,
of course, I dared not. It would have been cruel. Jack Curtis had
nothing to go upon except his impression--the same impression I myself
have at times, of Jim's vital presence in the midst of life. I have it
often, though never quite so strongly as that night in Paris, when he
would not let me kill myself.
It wasn't difficult to make Father Beckett consent to the new plan. He
told me afterward that his own great wish was to find Jim's grave, when
the end of the war would make search possible.
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