“Are you mad,” he asked, “that you suppose that I, Oro, the King of kings, can be content to dwell solitary in a great cave with none but the shadows of the dead to serve me?  Nay, I must rule again and be even greater than before, or else I too will die.  Better to face the future, even if it means oblivion, than to remain thus a relic of a glorious past, still living and yet dead, like that statue of the great god Fate which you saw in the temple of my worship.”

“Bastin does not think that the future means oblivion,” I remarked.

“I know it.  I have studied his faith and find it too humble for my taste, also too new.  Shall I, Oro, creep a suppliant before any Power, and confess what Bastin is pleased to call my sins?  Nay, I who am great will be the equal of all greatness, or nothing.”

He paused a while, then went on: 

“Bastin speaks of ‘eternity.’  Where and what then is this eternity which if it has no end can have had no beginning?  I know the secret of the suns and their attendant worlds, and they are no more eternal than the insect which glitters for an hour.  Out of shapeless, rushing gases they gathered to live their day, and into gases at last they dissolve again with all they bore.”

“Yes,” I answered, “but they reform into new worlds.”

“That have no part with the old.  This world, too, will melt, departing to whence it came, as your sacred writings say, and what then of those who dwelt and dwell thereon?  No, Man of today, give me Time in which I rule and keep your dreams of an Eternity that is not, and in which you must still crawl and serve, even if it were.  Yet, if I might, I confess it, I would live on for ever, but as Master not as Slave.”

On another night he began to tempt me, very subtly.  “I see a spark of greatness in you, Humphrey,” he said, “and it comes into my heart that you, too, might learn to rule.  With Yva, the last of my blood, it is otherwise.  She is the child of my age and of a race outworn; too gentle, too much all womanly.  The soul that triumphs must shine like steel in the sun, and cut if need be; not merely be beauteous and shed perfume like a lily in the shade.  Yet she is very wise and fair,” here he looked at me, “perchance of her might come children such as were their forefathers, who again would wield the sceptre of the dominion of the earth.”

I made no answer, wondering what he meant exactly and thinking it wisest to be silent.

“You are of the short-lived races,” he went on, “yet very much a man, not without intelligence, and by the arts I have I can so strengthen your frame that it will endure the shocks of time for three such lives as yours, or perchance for more, and then—­”

Again he paused and went on: 

“The Daughter of kings likes you also, perhaps because you resemble—­” here he fixed me with his piercing eyes, “a certain kinglet of base blood whom once she also liked, but whom it was my duty to destroy.  Well, I must think.  I must study this world of yours also and therein you may help me.  Perhaps afterwards I will tell you how.  Now sleep.”