“Death is the disengagement of this ray from its envelope. It returns to the source, to the pleroma or fulness of being and light whence it emanated, and loses itself in the one urn of splendor!”
“But when Pactolus and Styx run into the sea, the waters are mingled and lost, as to their individuality.”
“And so with the spirits of men.”
“What!” exclaimed Domitia. “When I die my little ray re-enters the sun and is lost in the general glory—and my father’s ray is also sucked in and disappears! There is no comfort in a thought where individuality is extinguished. But say. How know you that what you have propounded is the truth?”
The Magus hesitated and became confused.
“It is,” said he, “a solution at which the minds of the great thinkers of the East have arrived.”
“I see,” said Domitia, “it is no more than a guess. You and all alike are stagnant pools, whose muddy bottoms ferment and generate and throw up guesswork bubbles. One bubble looks more substantial than another, yet are all only the disguise of equal emptiness.”
The Chaldæan withdrew muttering in his beard. Domitia looked after him and noticed the physician Luke standing near, leaning over the bulwarks.
He was an elderly man, with kindly soft eyes, and a short beard in which some strands of gray appeared. A modest man, ready when called on to advise, but never self-assertive.
Domitia had noticed him already and had taken a liking to him, though she had not spoken to him. An unaccountable impulse induced her to address him.