the river, the soughing of the trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of the crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness.

'But you have heard him! You know!” she cried.

“Yes, I know,” I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her — from which I could not even defend myself.

“What a loss to me — to us!” — she corrected herself with beautiful generosity; then added in a murmur, 'To the world.