"This is my life," thought Micky; "my books forgotten, my work superseded. This is the whole of my life." And his agony increased, because all the same there had been in that life an elusive joy which, if only he could have distilled it, would have sweetened infinity. It was part of the jest that he should try, and should eternally oscillate between disgust and desire. For there is nothing ultimate in Hell; men will not lay aside all hope on entering it, or they would attain to the splendour of despair. To have made a poem about Hell is to mistake its very essence; it is the imagination of men, who will have beauty, that fashions it as ice or flame. Old, but capable of growing older, Micky lay in the sandy country, remembering that once he had remembered a country—a country that had not been sand....
He was aroused by the mutterings of the spirits round him. An uneasiness such as he had not noted in them before had arisen. "A pillar of sand," said one. Another said, "It is not; it comes from the river."
He asked, "What river?"
"The spirits of the damned dwell over it; we never speak of that river."
"Is it a broad river?"
"Swift, and very broad."
"Do the damned ever cross it?"
"They are permitted, we know not why, to cross it now and again."
And in these answers he caught a new tone, as if his companions were frightened, and were finding means to express their fear. When he said, "With permission, they can do us no harm," he was answered, "They harm us with light and a song." And again, "They harm us because they remember and try to remind."
"Of what would they remind us?"