“And as she looked at him, standing before her, it seemed to her, in the dim light, that instead of the evening clothes he had been wearing she saw again a glint of black armor as on the morning when he had first come to them, and then, like Elsa, she asked him who he was, and he, like Lohengrin, was gone.
“But from that day to this there has been no more sorrowing at Mallorie Abbey.”
The great northeaster had stopped its wild howling at the very moment that Vinton was adding: “They have never known which of them it was—whether it was Michael—or Gabriel—or Raphael!”
Ware poked the fire and said nothing.
“Do you believe it?” asked Ware’s sister.
“What an impossible word that word ‘believe’ is! What does it mean?”
“And do you like the idea—the idea of losing one’s identity in one great superlative being like that?”
Vinton thought a moment, and then he said: “When I remember that all the trouble on this earth comes in the train of that infernal thing we call the ego it seems to me that the heavenly things must indeed arise from its complete surrender. Yes,” he continued more slowly, “yes, I think I like it very much.”