No Time For Love (Bantam Series No. 40) Read Free Page B

lonely.”
    She was thinking of herself as she added:
    “Not only for those who die, but also for those who are left behind.”
    “For those who die,” Elvin Farren said, “it is an adventure, a release of the mind, and that in itself is something exciting to look forward to!”
    He glanced at her to see if she was following him. Then he went on:
    “Have you never thought what an encumbrance one’s body is? If it were not hampering us, keeping our feet on the ground, so to speak, we could fly wherever we wished to go! To other parts of the earth, to the moon or, more especially, to the Fourth Dimension.”
    “I think ... I understand what you are ... saying to me,” Larina said hesitatingly.
    Her grey eyes were wide in her oval face.
    This was not the sort of conversation she had ever had with anyone before.
    “And as for being alone while we are on earth,” Elvin Farren said, “why that is actually impossible!”
    “Why?” she asked.
    “Because you are a part of everything that is living,” he replied. “Look at these flowers.”
    He pointed as he spoke to a little bunch of blue gentians on the rocks in front of them.
    “They are alive,” he said, “as much alive as you and I are. They are living, and what is more, they feel even as we feel.”
    “How do you know that?” Larina asked.
    “I have a friend who has been working on the reactions of plant-life for some years,” he replied. “He believes, and I believe with him, that a plant has feelings because it contains, as we do ... the cosmic force which we call life.”
    “Explain ... explain it to me,” Larina begged.
    She was fascinated by what this stranger was telling her, and she turned towards him feeling in some inexplicable manner that she must get closer to him.
    “The Buddhists never pick flowers,” Elvin began. “They believe by touching one and loving it they share its life and it becomes a part of themselves.”
    He smiled as he said:
    “In my country, the American Indians when they are in need of energy will go into a wood such as this. With their arms extended they will place their backs to a pine-tree and they replenish themselves with its power.”
    “I can understand that,” Larina said, “and I am sure it is true. I have often thought when I have been walking alone in the woods that the trees were pulsatingly alive and that there was a kind of vibration coming from them.”
    “So when there is life all around you, how could you ever be alone?”
    It had been easy to understand what he was saying to her when they were sitting in the pine-woods and looking at the flowers, Larina thought. But in the confines of her little bedroom in Eaton Terrace she felt that she needed help desperately.
    If only she could talk to Elvin, she wished, as they had talked together so often after that first meeting.
    Mrs. Milton’s health had improved and Dr. Heinrich said she was out of danger for the moment. Larina had gone to find Elvin on the balcony of his isolated chalet because she wanted to share her joy with someone.
    He invited her to sit down and she realised that from his balcony there was an even more marvellous view of the valley beneath them and the mountains in the distance.
    While at first she had been afraid of imposing herself on him, she had soon learnt that he enjoyed seeing her, and whenever she was not with her mother she found her way to his balcony and they would sit talking in the crisp clear air.
    Nearly always they spoke of the mystical things that Elvin believed existed in other dimensions.
    “This is a material world,” he said. “It is merely a shadow of the next which is non-material and very much more advanced mentally and spiritually.”
    “But suppose someone like myself is not clever enough to understand it?” Larina asked.
    “Then you will have to stay here,” he replied, “and go on learning and developing until you can.”
    He had so much to tell her that Larina had begun to count the hours to when