And my head grew dizzy, and as I climbed the blood burst from my finger-tips.
Then we came out upon a lonely mountain-top.
No living being moved there; but far off on a solitary peak I saw a lonely figure standing. Whether it were man or woman I could not tell; for partly it seemed the figure of a woman, but its limbs were the mighty limbs of a man. I asked God whether it was man or woman.
God said, “In the least Heaven sex reigns supreme; in the higher it is not noticed; but in the highest it does not exist.”
And I saw the figure bend over its work, and labour mightily, but what it laboured at I could not see.
I said to God, “How came it here?”
God said, “By a bloody stair. Step by step it mounted from the lowest Hell, and day by day as Hell grew farther and Heaven no nearer, it hung alone between two worlds. Hour by hour in that bitter struggle its limbs grew larger, till there fell from it rag by rag the garments which it started with. Drops fell from its eyes as it strained them; each step it climbed was wet with blood. Then it came out here.”
And I thought of the garden where men sang with their arms around one another; and the mountain-side where they worked in company. And I shuddered.
And I said, “Is it not terribly alone here?”
God said, “It is never alone!”