I hated that man, when he had his shape and his warmth.  We were foreigners, and made to destroy ourselves.  Yet it seems to me, in face of that bluish heart, still attached to its red cords, that I understand the value of life.  It is understood by force, like a caress.  I think I can see how many seasons and memories and beings there had to be, yonder, to make up that life,—­while I remain before him, on a point of the plain, like a night watcher.  I hear the voice that his flesh breathed while yet he lived a little, when my ferocious hands fumbled in him for the skeleton we all have.  He fills the whole place.  He is too many things at once.  How can there be worlds in the world?  That established notion would destroy all.

This perfume of a tuberose is the breath of corruption.  On the ground, I see crows near me, like hens.

Myself!  I think of myself, of all that I am.  Myself, my home, my hours; the past, and the future,—­it was going to be like the past!  And at that moment I feel, weeping within me and dragging itself from some little bygone trifle, a new and tragical sorrow in dying, a hunger to be warm once more in the rain and the cold:  to enclose myself in myself in spite of space, to hold myself back, to live.  I called for help, and then lay panting, watching the distance in desperate expectation.  “Stretcher-bearers!” I cry.  I do not hear myself; but if only the others heard me!

Now that I have made that effort, I can do no more, and my head lies there at the entrance to that world-great wound.

There is nothing now.

Yet there is that man.  He was laid out like one dead.  But suddenly, through his shut eyes, he smiled.  He, no doubt, will come back here on earth, and something within me thanks him for his miracle.

And there was that one, too, whom I saw die.  He raised his hand, which was drowning.  Hidden in the depths of the others, it was only by that hand that he lived, and called, and saw.  On one finger shone a wedding-ring, and it told me a sort of story.  When his hand ceased to tremble, and became a dead plant with that golden flower, I felt the beginning of a farewell rise in me like a sob.  But there are too many of them for one to mourn them all.  How many of them are there on all this plain?  How many, how many of them are there in all this moment?  Our heart is only made for one heart at a time.  It wears us out to look at all.  One may say, “There are the others,” but it is only a saying.  “You shall not know; you shall not know.”

Barrenness and cold have descended on all the body of the earth.  Nothing moves any more, except the wind, that is charged with cold water, and the shells, that are surrounded by infinity, and the crows, and the thought that rolls immured in my head.

* * * * * *

They are motionless at last, they who forever marched, they to whom space was so great!  I see their poor hands, their poor legs, their poor backs, resting on the earth.  They are tranquil at last.  The shells which bespattered them are ravaging another world.  They are in the peace eternal.