I glanced toward the diminishing sun.  It showed, only as a dark blot on the face of the Green Sun.  As I watched, I saw it grow smaller, steadily, as though rushing toward the superior orb, at an immense speed.  Intently, I stared.  What would happen?  I was conscious of extraordinary emotions, as I realized that it would strike the Green Sun.  It grew no bigger than a pea, and I looked, with my whole soul, to witness the final end of our System—­that system which had borne the world through so many aeons, with its multitudinous sorrows and joys; and now—­

Suddenly, something crossed my vision, cutting from sight all vestige of the spectacle I watched with such soul-interest.  What happened to the dead sun, I did not see; but I have no reason—­in the light of that which I saw afterward—­to disbelieve that it fell into the strange fire of the Green Sun, and so perished.

And then, suddenly, an extraordinary question rose in my mind, whether this stupendous globe of green fire might not be the vast Central Sun—­the great sun, ’round which our universe and countless others revolve.  I felt confused.  I thought of the probable end of the dead sun, and another suggestion came, dumbly—­Do the dead stars make the Green Sun their grave?  The idea appealed to me with no sense of grotesqueness; but rather as something both possible and probable.

XX

THE CELESTIAL GLOBES

For a while, many thoughts crowded my mind, so that I was unable to do aught, save stare, blindly, before me.  I seemed whelmed in a sea of doubt and wonder and sorrowful remembrance.

It was later, that I came out of my bewilderment.  I looked about, dazedly.  Thus, I saw so extraordinary a sight that, for a while, I could scarcely believe I was not still wrapped in the visionary tumult of my own thoughts.  Out of the reigning green, had grown a boundless river of softly shimmering globes—­each one enfolded in a wondrous fleece of pure cloud.  They reached, both above and below me, to an unknown distance; and, not only hid the shining of the Green Sun; but supplied, in place thereof, a tender glow of light, that suffused itself around me, like unto nothing I have ever seen, before or since.

In a little, I noticed that there was about these spheres, a sort of transparency, almost as though they were formed of clouded crystal, within which burned a radiance—­gentle and subdued.  They moved on, past me, continually, floating onward at no great speed; but rather as though they had eternity before them.  A great while, I watched, and could perceive no end to them.  At times, I seemed to distinguish faces, amid the cloudiness; but strangely indistinct, as though partly real, and partly formed of the mistiness through which they showed.

For a long time, I waited, passively, with a sense of growing content.  I had no longer that feeling of unutterable loneliness; but felt, rather, that I was less alone, than I had been for kalpas of years.  This feeling of contentment, increased, so that I would have been satisfied to float in company with those celestial globules, forever.