How idle all things--money, happiness, even love itself seemed beside this certainty of leaving them all. The only thing that money had brought to him was the death of a wild animal--thank God!--alone! Except for Aura.
Aura! Aura! Aura!
Yes! she had been right. Love like his needed nothing. It could exist--nay! grow to greater strength without trivialities. They were beyond the Shadow of the Night now; nothing could touch them again. They would go on and on....
That night he slept a little under the stars, and in his dreams he saw her walking amid the drifts of iris leading a little child by the hand. Her face was sad, and as he tried to comfort her, his eyes opened; and lo! it was dawn once more.
A primrose dawn, with little faint, far grey clouds just flecking the wide waste of gold.
"It was quite perfect."
Her words came back to him. She was wrong. The part could not be perfect, and what were they, their griefs, their joys, their loves, but part of the great whole.
His mind was beginning to wander a little, and in the high noon tide he slept to dream that he saw the little child alone. Her head was crowned with iris flowers, her feet were among them, her eyes were violet and white as they were. They looked into his. "Mother says you have no right," came her childish voice. "I am the immortality of the race. Die and forget her. Die and forget all things."
When he awoke, a raven, perched on a rock hard by, cawed hoarsely, and flapped lazily away to watch from a greater distance.
A few drops of water trickled from the rock close beside him. He had hollowed out a little cup for it with his hand and drank of it from time to time. Now he poured some of it on his head which had begun to ache. What use was there in prolonging the agony? The sooner it was over the better. He searched in his pockets for any scrap of paper which might betray him, and, tearing them up, dug them toilfully into the ground, almost amusing himself in restoring the spot to perfect homogeneity with its surroundings.