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The Life Everlasting; a reality of romance by Marie Corelli
page 116 of 476 (24%)
knew not why I should expect anything. Beautiful as the whole scene
was, and fully as I recognised its beauty, an overpowering
depression suddenly gripped me as with a cold hand,--there was a
dreary emptiness in this majestic solitude that seemed to crush my
spirit utterly.

I moved a little away from my companions, and leaned over the deck
rail, looking far into the black shadows of the shore, defined more
deeply by the contrasting brilliance of the moon, and my thoughts
flew with undesired swiftness to the darkest line of life's horizon-
-I had for the moment lost the sense of joy. How wretched all we
human creatures are!--I said to my inner self,--what hope after all
is there for us, imprisoned in a world which has no pity for us
whatever may be our fate,--a world that goes on in precisely the
same fashion whether we live or die, work or are idle? These tragic
hills, this cold lake, this white moon, were the same when Caesar
lived, and would still be the same when we who gazed upon them now
were all gone into the Unknown. It seemed difficult to try and
realise this obvious fact--so difficult as to be almost unnatural.
Supposing that any towns or villages had ever existed on this
desolate shore, they had proved useless against the devouring forces
of Nature,--just as the splendid buried cities of South America had
proved useless in all their magnificence,--useless as the 'Golden
Age of Lanka' in Ceylon more than two thousand years ago. Of what
avail then is the struggle of human life? Is it for the many or only
for the few? Is all the toil and sorrow of millions merely for the
uplifting and perfecting of certain individual types, and is this
what Christ meant when He said 'Many are called but few are chosen'?
If so, why such waste of brain and heart and love and patience?
Tears came suddenly into my eyes and I started as from a bad dream
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