"
"Does it ease you to make such an amazing noise?" inquired Unorna,
raising her eyebrows.
"Immensely. Our friend cannot hear it, and you can. You dare to tell me
that if he dies you are the only loser. Do fifty years of study count
for nothing? Look at me. I am an old man, and unless I find the secret
of life here, in this very room, before many years are over, I must
die--die, do you understand? Do you know what it means to die? How can
you comprehend that word--you girl, you child, you thing of five and
twenty summers!"
"It was to be supposed that your own fears were at the root of your
anger," observed Unorna, sitting down upon her chair and calmly folding
her hands as though to wait until the storm should pass over.
"Is there anything at the root of anything except Self? You moth, you
butterfly, you thread of floating gossamer! How can you understand the
incalculable value of Self--of that which is all to me and nothing to
you, or which, being yours, is everything to you and to me nothing? You
are so young--you still believe in things, and interests, and good and
evil, and love and hate, truth and falsehood, and a hundred notions
which are not facts, but only contrasts between one self and another!
What were you doing here when I found you playing with life and death,
perhaps with my life, for a gipsy trick, in the crazy delusion that this
old parcel of humanity can see the shadows of things which are not yet?
I saw, I heard.
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