He took no notice. "By that, I take it, you see something that is
alive, but that necessarily does not have to live for ever."

"I read more than that," I continued boldly.

"Then you read consciousness. You read the consciousness of life
that it is alive; but still no further away, no endlessness of
life."

How clearly he thought, and how well he expressed what he thought!
From regarding me curiously, he turned his head and glanced out
over the leaden sea to windward. A bleakness came into his eyes,
and the lines of his mouth grew severe and harsh. He was evidently
in a pessimistic mood.

"Then to what end?" he demanded abruptly, turning back to me. "If
I am immortal--why?"

I halted. How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could
I put into speech a something felt, a something like the strains of
music heard in sleep, a something that convinced yet transcended
utterance?

"What do you believe, then?" I countered.

"I believe that life is a mess," he answered promptly. "It is like
yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an
hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to
move. The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the
strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky