In
vain he cried to the wheelman to stop the wheel: there was no answer.
Would those stars never cease blinking in and out, or the wind stop
whipping the swift clouds past? So he went on, endless years, driving
through space, some terrible intangible weight dragging at his heart, and
all his body panting as it spun.
Grotesque faces came and went, and bright-eyed women floated by, laughing
at him, beckoning to him; but he could not come, because of this endless
going. He heard them singing, he felt the divine notes in his battered
soul; he tried to weep for the hopeless joy of it; but the tears came no
higher than his throat. Why did they mock him so? At last, all the
figures merged into one, and she had the face--ah, he had seen it
centuries ago!--of Madame Chalice. Strange that she was so young still,
and that was so long past--when he stood on a mountain, and, clambering a
high wall of rock, looked over into a happy No-man's Land.
Why did the face elude him so, flashing in and out of the vapours? Why
was its look sorrowful and distant? And yet there was that perfect smile,
that adorable aspect of the brow, that light in the deep eyes.
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