He knew one of the fundamental laws to be that while a person can shorten his life by taking it, no one can add one second to the span of life on earth allotted to him on each incarnation. And he recognized that it might be that his time had come to leave his present body for good.
To do so would now be easy, and in many ways it held out a tempting prospect. While away from earth he would again be with numerous long-time friends who were also out of incarnation for the time being, and some of whom he could not have had the joy of seeing for many generations. He would also see others who had died before him in his present life - Angela among them.
But it would not be the same as living with her on earth. He knew too that never again would they be reincarnated in the same period with similar bodies. Sooner or later the bond between them, as with his other long-time friends, would ensure their coming together again on earth in some relationship, but until that happened they would be no more to one another than companions in the Fields of Asphodel, the Land of Sekhet-Aaru, the Gardens beneath which Rivers Flow - as various peoples had termed the enchanted country in which spirits out of incarnation awaited their return to earth. It was this knowledge which, after his first weeks of grief, had enabled him to put thoughts of Angela, all but occasionally, out of his mind. Since arriving in Barcelona he had accepted their love as a closed chapter in one of his many lives.
Each life on earth he knew to be like a term in school, during which one must learn the new lessons set for one and strive to overcome some weakness of character, whereas to be out of incarnation meant a long and joyous holiday with no tests to pass, no ailments or accidents and no cares of any kind; so the thought of that alone was a big inducement to make no further effort and allow his Silver Cord to disintegrate.
Yet there was also the thought that after that glorious holiday there was no escaping the law which would send him back to earth again in a new incarnation. What form would it take?
He knew the widely-spread Indian belief, that an ill-spent life on earth might result in one's being reincarnated as an animal, or even an insect, to be a heresy. No soul that had once achieved human status was ever sent back as a part of one of the group souls that animated the lower species of creation. Those, too, who had advanced as far as he had always returned with some part of the knowledge they had acquired in previous lives lying dormant within them; so, except in cases where they still had to learn some special lesson, such as humility, they were given an opportunity to become in some degree members of some governing class.
But in this incarnation he had been born the heir to a Duke, and given a fine body, a handsome face and plenty of money. He could hardly expect such good fortune and so easy a path next time. He was, too, still only in his early thirties; so he might yet do great things.
It was then it occurred to him that he might no longer have a fine body. Obviously it had received a most savage battering and, as a result of the fall of twenty feet, might have some internal injury that would make him a cripple for the rest of his life. His astral vision having an X-ray quality not granted with ordinary-human sight, he began to examine it thoroughly and assess the full amount of the damage it had sustained.
His scalp was cut at the back of his head and his skull slightly cracked at the side some way above the right ear; more serious, there were broken skin and a huge bruise across the centre of his forehead and it was this which had caused his temporary loss of memory. His left collar-bone was broken, two of his ribs were cracked, and his left leg was broken about six inches above the ankle; but it was a clean break, not a compound fracture, and he could see no sign of internal haemorrhage. His lungs, however, were severely inflamed, which might lead to pneumonia.
Summing matters up he decided that, once over the initial shock to the system caused by such multiple injuries, there was none among them that should prevent him within a few weeks, or at worst months, from riding, fighting and loving again. So it would still be a fine body, and a sad waste to leave it - and all the other good things that went with it - for an unknown future. But he greatly doubted now if he had any choice.
On that another thought came to him. Perhaps the choice had been left to him in order to test his will-power. If so, he must not shirk the test. It was the law that as long as one had the power to keep life in one's body one should do so. Even those who died under torture were expected to stick it out to the limit of their endurance. They were paying off a debt for some evil they had done to another in the past, and were not given more pain than with extreme fortitude they could bear; so to give up the ghost prematurely left part of the debt unpaid, and was a minor form of suicide. It was possible - no, certain - that if he lived on there were numerous debts that it had been decreed that he should pay during his incarnation as Armand de Quesnoy. The thought decided him. He must make an all-out attempt to get back.
He had hardly taken the decision when a doctor appeared with a lay sister behind him. Taking the wrist of the body, the doctor felt for a pulse, dropped the wrist, then turned up one of the eyelids, glanced at the eye, and shut it. Turning to the lay sister he said, 'He's gone. You can start washing the body and preparing it for burial whenever you like.'
Swiftly now de Quesnoy began to concentrate. No relaxation of muscles was first required, but the employment of a thought rhythm, then the creation of a mental image of the body breathing to that rhythm. Had his Silver Cord had its normal strength the lungs would have responded at once, but now they seemed impenetrable. Yet very slowly the outline of the bed and body on which he was looking down began to blur. For two more long minutes of concentration, so intense that his mind became an agony in the void, he could still see them faintly. Then they disappeared. At the same instant his Silver Cord thickened, he felt a pull upon it that carried him downwards as though borne by a wind of hurricane strength. Two great tunnels - his nostrils magnified a hundred times - opened in front of him and within a matter of seconds he became conscious again of the weight of his limbs.
For several minutes, utterly exhausted by his effort, he made attempt to move. The lay sister emerged from behind one of the screens wheeling a small table with a bowl of water and some bandages on it. She stripped down the bed-clothes but still he made no sign. He knew that his hold on life remained most precarious, and that even an effort to sit up might prove so great a strain that it would drive his spirit out of his body again, and this time once and for all.
It was not until she put her hands flat on his stomach to press it empty that he summoned what little strength he had to show that he was still alive. For one awful moment he feared it was too little even to make his vocal cords work; but as she threw her weight upon him he succeeded in letting out a deep groan.
Exclaiming 'Saints defend us; he's not yet gone after all!' she ran off and next minute returned with the doctor.
While he was making a quick examination, de Quesnoy succeeded in slightly fluttering his eyelashes to confirm that the woman had not raised a false alarm. The doctor sent for his hypodermic and hot-water bottles, other nuns came to busy themselves about the bedside, and a quarter of an hour later the Count, now carefully tucked up again, had responded satisfactorily to their treatment.