'The One remains, the Many change and pass!'
That was beautiful. That calmed the soul. Gwen's dead face came back to her now without any terror in it. The Sting of Death was gone.
But Love--the love that Gwen had felt, of which she herself was not all unconscious, what of that?
Dimly, darkly, as in a glass, the girl saw that to be noble it must be the antithesis of Death--it must be Birth. But that was not the Love of the world. What had Mervyn, what had Gwen, thought of Birth? Nothing. If anything they had hoped to evade it. They had tried to take the Pleasure without incurring the Pain. They had not thought of anything but themselves.
She passed on to the window-sill and looked down once more on the "most beautiful thing in the most beautiful place in the world."
But what was that really?
Was it Love standing between Birth and Death, or was it something better? Something beyond both. Something of which but a glimpse could be caught during that journey between the Cradle and the Grave?
So, for one brief moment as she stood looking at the iris she saw that Something, beyond Birth, beyond Death, beyond even Love. A shimmer came to the air, her pulses caught the rhythm, and lo! she was no more, the One was All, and from the uttermost end of Space came back the ceaseless Wave of Unity.
And then?...
Then the fear of death re-asserted itself. Surely the flags of the iris showed limp! The dear thing must not stop there without due foothold on the round world, else would it lose the immortality of new birth.