can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought. What is the
purpose of our feeble crying in the awful silences of space? Can our dim
intelligence read the secrets of that star-strewn sky? Does any answer
come out of it? Never any at all, nothing but echoes and fantastic
visions! And yet we believe that there is an answer, and that upon a
time a new Dawn will come blushing down the ways of our enduring night.
We believe it, for its reflected beauty even now shines up continually
in our hearts from beneath the horizon of the grave, and we call it
Hope. Without Hope we should suffer moral death, and by the help of Hope
we yet may climb to Heaven, or at the worst, if she also prove but a
kindly mockery given to hold us from despair, be gently lowered into the
abysses of eternal sleep.

Then I fell to reflecting upon the undertaking on which we were bent,
and what a wild one it was, and yet how strangely the story seemed to
fit in with what had been written centuries ago upon the sherd. Who
was this extraordinary woman, Queen over a people apparently as
extraordinary as herself, and reigning amidst the vestiges of a lost
civilisation? And what was the meaning of this story of the Fire that
gave unending life? Could it be possible that any fluid or essence
should exist which might so fortify these fleshy walls that they
should from age to age resist the mines and batterings of decay? It was
possible, though not probable. The infinite continuation of life would
not, as poor Vincey said, be so marvellous a thing as the production of
life and its temporary endurance. And if it were true, what then? The
person who found it could no doubt rule the world. He could accumulate
all the wealth in the world, and all the power, and all the wisdom that
is power. He might give a lifetime to the study of each art or science.
Well, if that were so, and this _She_ were practically immortal, which
I did not for one moment believe, how was it that, with all these things