And we, too, some day would no longer love, having become part of this monstrous, lovely earth, of that cold, whiffling air.  To be no longer able to love!  It seemed incredible, too grim to bear; yet it was true!  To become powder, and the wind; no more to feel the sunlight; to be loved no more!  To become a whiffling noise, cold, without one’s self!  To drift on the breath of that noise, homeless!  Up here, there were not even those little velvet, grey-white flower-comrades we had plucked.  No life!  Nothing but the creeping wind, and those great rocky heights, whence came the sound of falling-symbols of that cold, untimely state into which we, too, must pass.  Never more to love, nor to be loved!  One could but turn to the earth, and press one’s face to it, away from the wild loveliness.  Of what use loveliness that must be lost; of what use loveliness when one could not love?  The earth was warm and firm beneath the palms of the hands; but there still came the sound of the impartial wind, and the careless roar of the stories falling.

Below, in those valleys amongst the living trees and grass, was the comradeship of unnumbered life, so that to pass out into Peace, to step beyond, to die, seemed but a brotherly act, amongst all those others; but up here, where no creature breathed, we saw the heart of the desert that stretches before each little human soul.  Up here, it froze the spirit; even Peace seemed mocking—­hard as a stone.  Yet, to try and hide, to tuck one’s head under one’s own wing, was not possible in this air so crystal clear, so far above incense and the narcotics of set creeds, and the fevered breath of prayers and protestations.  Even to know that between organic and inorganic matter there is no gulf fixed, was of no peculiar comfort.  The jealous wind came creeping over the lifeless limestone, removing even the poor solace of its warmth; one turned from it, desperate, to look up at the sky, the blue, burning, wide, ineffable, far sky.

Then slowly, without reason, that icy fear passed into a feeling, not of joy, not of peace, but as if Life and Death were exalted into what was neither life nor death, a strange and motionless vibration, in which one had been merged, and rested, utterly content, equipoised, divested of desire, endowed with life and death.

But since this moment had come before its time, we got up, and, close together, marched on rather silently, in the hot sun. 1910.

MY DISTANT RELATIVE

Though I had not seen my distant relative for years—­not, in fact, since he was obliged to give Vancouver Island up as a bad job—­I knew him at once, when, with head a little on one side, and tea-cup held high, as if, to confer a blessing, he said:  “Hallo!” across the Club smoking-room.

Thin as a lath—­not one ounce heavier—­tall, and very upright, with his pale forehead, and pale eyes, and pale beard, he had the air of a ghost of a man.  He had always had that air.  And his voice—­that matter-of-fact and slightly nasal voice, with its thin, pragmatical tone—­was like a wraith of optimism, issuing between pale lips.  I noticed; too, that his town habiliments still had their unspeakable pale neatness, as if, poor things, they were trying to stare the daylight out of countenance.