"Through this strange fate of ours," he said, "we fulfil the end of the world."
Old doctrinal associations flitted before the phrase, blurring for her his pagan use of it.
"The end, the aim of the universe, seems to be beauty—beauty so varied in spirit and in form that it often gets strange names from men."
"Yes, it is all beautiful, isn't it, Ethan?"
"That you can always see it so, and that even I can see it sometimes, proves we are not the lowest in the scale of life. That power of finding Beauty through her disguises is the best seal civilization sets on men."
"And so even you believe we fulfil the end of the world?"
He nodded.
"It's as magnificent, in its way, as a mountain peak, or the going down of the sun, that puny men should accept the outrage of life and the insult of death so nobly, with so little crying out. When one thinks of it"—he laughed harshly—"the old gods and heroes were pygmies compared with modern men. What were their doings and their destinies to the hopeless, silent battle men are waging, without God and without hope in the world? The men of to-day don't go reeling into battle, drunken with the wine of hope, or dazed with the fairy tales of faith. But they fight none the less well, knowing they go out to die, and not even sure for what cause. It is so they fulfil the end of the world. Nothing in it is mightier than the spirit of man calmly confronting his fate."
She drew a quick breath.