"We are many upon the world—we irreconcilables. We cry inconsolably like lost children, 'Oh, ye Gods, have ye forgotten us? Oh, ye Gods, or servants of gods, who abandoned us here, remember us!'
"For perhaps we are kidnapped persons. Perhaps thrones lie vacant on some stars because we are hidden away here upon the earth. I for one have a royal seal on my bosom, a mysterious mark, the sign of a royal house. Ah, my brothers, we are all scions of that house.
"One day I met a man who voluntarily sought death in order to penetrate the mystery of the beyond. But no sign showed itself forth to us, and we know not whether by his desperate deed he won what we have lost, or whether, perchance, he lost all that we can ever win.
"The burden of my ignorance is hard to bear," he cried. The burden of our ignorance is hard to bear. Thus we cry, but there comes no answer, and the eternal silence which enfolds the earth is unbroken. Yet the stars still shine, promising but not fulfilling.
We have become star-gazers, we irreconcilables; expecters of signs and wonders. We live upon every ridge of the world, and have made of every mountain a watch-tower; and from the towers we strain our eyes to see past the stars.
For the stars are perchance but the flowers in a garden, or the lights upon the walls of a garden, and beyond them is the palace of our fathers.
"And since the early days till now," said my companion, "I have wandered about the world, sometimes sojourning a while in a town, but seldom for long. For the town is not a good place."
Then I told him how the town had tempted me, and we compared experiences. We told of the times when we had come nigh forgetting.
"Just think," said I to him, "I should never have found you had I been swallowed up in the town."
"And I should never have lain at your feet in the sun," he replied.
"You would never have noticed me in the town."