conventions and inherited ideas. I know now that what I was
seeking was nothing less than the Infinite; that I had "immortal
longings in me." I listened to all their solemn talk of epochs
and years measureless to man, and reflected with a thrill that
after all man might have his part in every one of them. Yes, that
bird of passage as he seemed to be, flying out of darkness into
darkness, still he might have spread his wings in the light of
other suns millions upon millions of years ago, and might still
spread them, grown radiant and glorious, millions upon millions
of years hence in a time unborn.

If only I could know the truth. Was Life (according to Bickley)
merely a short activity bounded by nothingness before and behind;
or (according to Bastin) a conventional golden-harped and haloed
immortality, a word of which he did not in the least understand
the meaning?

Or was it something quite different from either of these,
something vast and splendid beyond the reach of vision,
something God-sent, beginning and ending in the Eternal Absolute
and at last partaking of His attributes and nature and from aeon
to aeon shot through with His light? And how was the truth to be
learned? I asked my Eastern friends, and they talked vaguely of
long ascetic preparation, of years upon years of learning, from
whom I could not quite discover. I was sure it could not be from
them, because clearly they did not know; they only passed on what
they had heard elsewhere, when or how they either could not or
would not explain. So at length I gave it up, having satisfied
myself that all this was but an effort of Oriental imagination
called into life by the sweet influences of the Eastern stars.