Beyond humanity, far into the mists of time where strange shapes bodied themselves, unrecognizable, and were dissipated into others yet more strange, the visions continued in ever-increasing recession—leading back into a distance where they lost all sense of personal participation among vague and formless shadows.
They watched, in a breathless fascination.
Still farther back, beyond those shadows, something began to glow in the depths of a night that cleared to transparent blackness, a ball of fire, of living light that pulsed with intense incandescence in an uttermost remoteness. And, as they watched, it divided itself, split into two smaller spheres that circled about each other, throwing out flames that reached like clutching arms in vain endeavour to reëstablish unity. For an incomputable period—it seemed æons to those souls who watched—they circled, held in mutual attraction and yet still apart despite the reaching streamers. And then slowly, slowly, they approached—their light heightening to a yet more vivid brightness as they drew near....
The crystal globe slipped from numbed fingers into the fireplace. As though roused from a dream by the crash of its contact with the brass curb, the girl started and turned to her companion. He picked up the crystal, starred and fissured with its fall—henceforth useless.
“Oh, Jim!” she cried in poignant regret. “We shall not see—— What is going to happen this time?”
She held his hand between her two, gazed up into his face in fond anxiety, yearned out to him.
He put down the crystal, drew her close, enfolded her.
“Love!” he answered. “Love—once more and for always! And, to us, dear, nothing else matters. It is the one reality.”
In each other’s eyes they saw, with a perception transcending physical vision, the divine light of those sundered spheres that drew together.