“And what, oh Queen,” I answered, “are those things that are dear to man?  Are they not bubbles?  Is not ambition but an endless ladder by which no height is ever climbed till the last unreachable rung is mounted?  For height leads on to height, and there is no resting-place upon them, and rung doth grow upon rung, and there is no limit to the number.  Doth not wealth satiate, and become nauseous, and no longer serve to satisfy or pleasure, or to buy an hour’s peace of mind?  And is there any end to wisdom that we may hope to reach it?  Rather, the more we learn, shall we not thereby be able only to better compass out our ignorance?  Did we live ten thousand years could we hope to solve the secrets of the suns, and of the space beyond the suns, and of the Hand that hung them in the heavens?  Would not our wisdom be but as a gnawing hunger calling our consciousness day by day to a knowledge of the empty craving of our souls?  Would it not be but as a light in one of these great caverns, that, though bright it burn, and brighter yet, doth but the more serve to show the depths of the gloom around it?  And what good thing is there beyond that we may gain by length of days?”

“Nay, my Holly, there is love—­love which makes all things beautiful, and doth breathe divinity into the very dust we tread.  With love shall life roll gloriously on from year to year, like the voice of some great music that hath power to hold the hearer’s heart poised on eagles’ wings above the sordid shame and folly of the earth.”

“It may be so,” I answered; “but if the loved one prove a broken reed to pierce us, or if the love be loved in vain—­what then?  Shall a man grave his sorrows upon a stone when he hath but need to write them on the water?  Nay, oh She, I will live my day, and grow old with my generation, and die my appointed death, and be forgotten.  For I do hope for an immortality to which the little span that perchance thou canst confer will be but as a finger’s length laid against the measure of the great world; and, mark this! the immortality to which I look, and which my faith doth promise me, shall be free from the bonds that here must tie my spirit down.  For, while the flesh endures, sorrow and evil and the scorpion whips of sin must endure also; but when the flesh hath fallen from us, then shall the spirit shine forth clad in the brightness of eternal good, and for its common air shall breathe so rare an ether of most noble thoughts that the highest aspiration of our manhood, or the purest incense of a maiden’s prayer, would prove too earthly gross to float therein.”

“Thou lookest high,” answered Ayesha, with a little laugh, “and speakest clearly as a trumpet and with no uncertain sound.  And yet methinks that but now didst thou talk of ‘that Unknown’ from which the winding-sheet doth curtain us.  But perchance, thou seest with the eye of Faith, gazing on that brightness, that is to be, through the painted-glass of thy imagination.  Strange