The magnitude of his calamity had dulled the sharpness of each stroke, and thus it was not of loss of love, faith and fortune that he spoke, but of the frailty of life.  This is our habit.  A ship too richly freighted goes down, and straightway the owner laments, not his own deprivation, but that “all flesh is grass.”  “Vanity of vanities,” he cries, “all is vanity,” and we but guess at his hurt.  A mysterious consciousness is wiser than his reason, and connects the broken current of his life with a mighty movement which he knows afar, but cannot tell whether it be of Time or Eternity.  He who designed all, “did not He make one?”

Our days are empty, how should they be otherwise in a world whose very vanity is infinite?

“Imperial Sorrow loves her sway, or I had sooner broken your vigil, my brother,” said Bertram.  “I perceive that the falsity of life appals your spirit.  It is true that the faint lustre of that tiny orb will long survive these poor frames of ours; it is a fitting emblem of the deathless tenant within.”

But to Atma it was the symbol of a lost love.  He looked on it listlessly.  It seemed a long while since Moti died, for in his heart joy, and hope, and youth had died since.  The immortal destiny of man, a belief dear to the Sikh, seemed a thing indifferent.  Death might not be final, but it was yesterday he mourned, and of it he said:  “it is past.”

He knew of the soul’s Immortality, but of the Continuity of Life he had not heard,

* * * * *

     Dear Life, cling close, true friend, thro’ well or ill,
       Mine aye, we cannot part our company. 
     Though breathing cease and busy heart be still,
       Together will we wake eternally.

     Strange Life, in whose immeasurable clasp,
       The past, the present and the vast to be
     Mingle,—­O Time, the world is for thy grasp,
       I and my life for immortality.

     Those bygone hours that were too bright to stay,
       And vanished from my sight like morning mist,
     Will dawn again, and, ne’er to fade away,
       The fleeting moments endlessly exist.

     The present lives, the past and future twine;
       My life, my days forevermore endure. 
     My life—­it comes I know not whence, but mine
       For aye ’twill be, indissolubly sure.

* * * * *

When the night drew on, Atma went away.  In thought Bertram followed him, full of sad solicitude.

He strode along the heights.  The cooling air and the sense of isolation were grateful to his worn spirit.  He wandered far until he found himself in a rocky fortress, vast, black and terrible.  The lowering peaks above inclined their giant heads to one another in awful conclave, and the ghastly moonbeams pierced to the gloom below, where they enwrapped the lonely form of Atma in a phosphorescent glare.  The winds broke among the cliffs, and with shrieks and fearful laughter proclaimed the dark councils of the peaks, and in the din were heard mutterings and imprecations.  A transport seized the soul of Atma.  The horrible glee of the night awoke wrath, and he hurled defiance to the mocking winds.