be an end of belief in probity ... or nearly an end. But I could not see
what it all led up to; where it left us.

"You see," she began again, "I want to make it as little painful to you
as I can; as little painful as explanations _can_ make it. I can't feel
as you feel, but I can see, rather dimly, what it is that hurts you. And
so ... I want to; I really want to."

"But you won't do the one thing," I returned hopelessly to the charge.

"I cannot," she answered, "it must be like that; there isn't any way.
You are so tied down to these little things. Don't you see that de
Mersch, and--and all these people--don't really count? They aren't
anything at all in the scheme of things. I think that, even for you,
they aren't worth bothering about. They're only accidents; the accidents
that--"

"That what?" I asked, although I began to see dimly what she meant.

"That lead in the inevitable," she answered. "Don't you see? Don't you
understand? We _are_ the inevitable ... and you can't keep us back. We
have to come and you, you will only hurt yourself, by resisting." A
sense that this was the truth, the only truth, beset me. It was for the
moment impossible to think of anything else--of anything else in the
world. "You must accept us and all that we mean, you must stand back;
sooner or later. Look even all round you, and you will understand
better. You are in the house of a type--a type that became impossible.
Oh, centuries ago. And that type too, tried very hard to keep back the
inevitable; not only because itself went under, but because everything
that it stood for went under. And it had to suffer--heartache ... that