“Purity,” said he.
“Purity!” She seemed to muse upon it as a theme of mystery. “If you found purity, what would you match it with?”
“My sins!” he cried again. “Would you waste purity on purity, or mingle sin with sin?”
“Cumac,” said the wise woman, with no pride then but only pity, “you seek to conquer that which strikes the conqueror dead.”
Then, indeed, for a while he was mute, and then for a while he talked of his sickness and his frenzy. “Are there not charms,” he asked, “or magic herbs, to find and bind these demons?”
There was no charm—she told him—but the mind, and no magic but in the tranquillity of freedom.
“I do not know this,” he sighed, “it will never be known.”
The unknown—she told him—was better than the known.
“Alas, then,” sighed the King again, “I shall never discover it.”
“It is everywhere,” said Flaune, “but it is like a sweet herb that withers in the ground. All may gather it—and it is not gathered. All may see it—and it is not seen. All destroy it—and it never dies....”