“All, all, is perished! It may be that I have offended the two truths which I did not esteem sufficiently august. And I who willed to be Lord of the Third Truth have found no third truth anywhere. I have found only comfortably colored illusions. But I am content with that which I have found here upon Mispec Moor.”
In the while that Gerald had been speaking, the mists rose thicker and thicker from destroyed Antan. He had noted in the while that he spoke how the first wavering thin billows crept tentatively up the hills and along the roadway, creeping upon the ground, and under the low-swinging tree branches, with, as it seemed, a pre-meditated furtiveness; and then, as if emboldened by finding the way unopposed, these mists had risen up from the ground, always swiftlier, until now they had eclipsed all. Gerald, now that he ended his talking, could see nothing palpable anywhere save the little patch of intermingled stone and grass immediately beneath his feet; and about him everywhere were the cool mists, lighted with a diffused gray radiancy which seemed to come from all sides.
PART ELEVEN
THE BOOK OF REMNANTS
“When Wages are Paid, Work is Over.”
46.
The Gray Quiet Way of Ruins
GERALD now was wandering among thick luminous gray mists, on a gray way which led through long quieted places. It led him to a weather-beaten pavilion of badly stained and tattered cloth which once had been flesh-colored.
Within this pavilion was a masked skeleton. The gleaming bones sat upright, and in unmarred order, in a gilded chair. A fan lay in the lap of this skeleton, a fan that was painted with the gay amours of Harlequin and Columbine, which Pierrot was observing, wistfully, through a gap in a yew-hedge: and the skeleton wore a little black velvet carnival mask, which covered all the upper front part of the skull, about the eye-sockets.