“For me, quivering in the interspaces of the atmosphere, is the darkness the same that fills in my soul. I can see death urging itself into life, the shadow supporting the substance. For my life is burning an invisible flame. The glare of the light of myself, as I burn on the fuel of death, is not enough to hide from me the source and the issue. For what is a life but a flame that bursts off the surface of darkness, and tapers into the darkness again? But the death that issues differs from the death that was the source. At least, I shall enrich death with a potent shadow, if I do not enrich life.”
“Wasn’t that woman fine!” said Helena.
“So perfectly still,” he answered.
“The child realized nothing,” she said.
Siegmund laughed, then leaned forward impulsively to her.
“I am always so sorry,” he said, “that the human race is urged inevitably into a deeper and deeper realization of life.”
She looked at him, wondering what provoked such a remark.
“I guess,” she said slowly, after a while, “that the man, the sailor, will have a bad time. He was abominably careless.”
“He was careful of something else just then,” said Siegmund, who hated to hear her speak in cold condemnation. “He was attending to the machinery or something.”
“That was scarcely his first business,” said she, rather sarcastic.