They were there, the monarchs
of buried centuries and the thousands who had knelt at their thrones,
the high and the low, the outcast and the shrived, but each as alone
as if the solitary inhabitant of all Space And _he_, who would have
fled from his fellow-men on earth, must long in vain for the sound of
human voice or the rapture of human touch He must go on--on--in these
colorless, shadowless, haunted plains, until the last trumpet-blast
should awaken the echoes of the Universe and summon him to confront
his Maker and be judged Oh! if but once more he could see the earth he
had scorned! Was it spinning on its way still, that dark, tiny ball?
How long since he had given that last glance of farewell? It must
be years and years and years, as reckoned by the time of men, for in
Eternity there is no time. And Sioned--where was she? Desolate and
abandoned, shrieked at by sudden winds, flying terrified and helpless
over level, horizonless plains only to fling herself upon the grey
waves of Death's noiseless ocean? Oh, if he could but find her and
make her forget! Together, what would matter death and silence and
everlasting unrest? All would be forgot, all but the exquisite pain of
the regret for the years he had wasted on earth, and for the solitary
heritage he had left the world.
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