The Child of the Dawn by A.C. Benson

It is difficult to describe the strange emotions with which the departure of Amroth filled me. I think that, when I first entered the heavenly country, the strongest feeling I experienced was the sense of security -- the thought that the earthly life was over and done with, and that there remained the rest and tranquillity of heaven. What I cannot even now understand is this. I am dimly aware that I have lived a great series of lives, in each of which I have had to exist blindly, not knowing that my life was not bounded and terminated by death, and only darkly guessing and hoping, in passionate glimpses, that there might be a permanent life of the soul behind the life of the body. And yet, at first, on entering the heavenly country, I did not remember having entered it before; it was not familiar to me, nor did I at first recall in memory that I had been there before. The earthly life seems to obliterate for a time even the heavenly memory.

But the departure of Amroth swept away once and for all the sense of security. One felt of the earthly life, indeed, as a busy man may think of a troublesome visit he has to pay, which breaks across the normal current of his life, while he anticipates with pleasure his return to the usual activities of home across the interval of social distraction, which he does not exactly desire, but yet is glad that it should intervene, if only for the heightened sense of delight with which he will resume his real life.