Heart to Heart

by Don Pendleton

  You're probably having trouble too with all that personality-assimilation bit. Who were the six other Francescas and why were they there? Why not all forty? I don't know either; I've been working on that. I think maybe the six were the strongest of the forty—not necessarily the most recent but the most highly developed—and that they had a strong stake in that process. I have heard mystics speak of these things, the working out of important problems in a state somewhat resembling the purgatory of the Catholics, and I have heard of resolution within the flesh—similar to the psychiatric resolutions within our own sphere.

  You might work on this idea a bit yourself and let me know what you come up with.

  For myself, I've come a long way since that night at Pointe House. I awoke from that vivid dream several nights later and went straight to my study to write down something that awakened with me. I will give that to you as an afterword here. It has meaning for me in dealing with the aftermath of Francesca; I leave it to you to decide what that meaning is.

  I will close this account by again admitting that I do not know what reality is. I wish I did; but I can live okay without that knowledge for now. I know that I am real. Beyond that I know that something that is peculiarly me responds to something that is all around me. I feel that from that response flows experience, and that experience is tied in somehow to the reality that is existence itself. I know too that Francesca is real; not was real, is real. Hai Tsu and Valentinius and all the others are real; I know that they are because they help me define myself to myself, and because we are bound together in experience and by experience.

  Soul mates?

  Sure why not. Valentinius, that rascal, had known it all along, and he knew also that this experience would be her severest test. I was indeed the man for him.

  Some day, some where, I would like to think that he will be the man for me. It is not impossible.

  Afterword

  I believe that Francesca gave this to me after she'd gone home:

  A Lovers' Creed

  Because I love you,

  I happily put you first in any issue involving

  personal comfort or desires;

  I could not do otherwise,

  And love you.

  But in any issue involving personal conscience

  or sense of rightness and wrongness

  in conduct toward a third person,

  or some personal sense of duty,

  The one thing that our love cannot endure

  is for you to insist that I behave

  as though I were you

  instead of myself;

  You cannot supplant me—nor I, you—

  For we cannot love each other

  if we cannot be ourselves

  and respect ourselves—

  Cannot even know that we are loved or loving,

  except as we know who we are—

  And know that ultimately we stand before God

  naked and accountable

  for our own conscience

  and our decisions under that conscience.

  I can love you only as myself,

  not as another,

  I want you to love me only as yourself;

  For no other love can have meaning

  for either of us,

  And I cannot find that love or return it

  if I do not know who we are.

  Thank you, Francesca. I really needed that.

  ###

  Author's note

  The quotations on the life of St. Germain are taken from The Conte de St. Germain: The Secret of Kings by I. Cooper-Oakley, originally published by Ars Regia of Milan in 1912 and republished by Theosophical Publishing House, Ltd., of London in 1927 and again in 1985. The volume is very much in print and available through any bookseller in the U.S. and Great Britain.

  I recommend it to all as an interesting read.

  -dp

  About the Author

  Don Pendleton (1927-1995) is creator of The Executioner: Mack Bolan Action/Adventure series, Joe Copp, Private Eye Mystery Thrillers, and the Ashton Ford Psychic Detective Series.

  He also co-wrote, with his wife, Linda Pendleton, the nonfiction books To Dance With Angels and Whispers From the Soul: The Divine Dance of Consciousness, and the crime novel, Roulette.

  Don Pendleton, (1927-1995)

  Official Don Pendleton website: www.donpendleton.com

  Visit the Don Pendleton Smashwords Profile Page for available books of Don Pendleton

  The Ashton Ford Psychic Detective Series of six novels is available in print at Amazon.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One: The Summons

  Chapter Nineteen: Logia