the passengers, the thousand tones and shadings of the living moment are forgotten, but drenched in the strange, brown light of time, the scene glows again for an instant with an intent silence: darkness has fallen upon the eternal earth, the great ship like a monstrous visitant blazes on the waters, and on the tender the faces of the travellers are lifted up like flowers in a kind of rapt and mournful ecstasy—they are weary of travel, they have wandered in strange cities among strange tongues and faces, and they have left not even the print of their foot in any town.
Their souls are naked and alone, and they are strangers upon the earth, and many of them long for a place where those weary of travel may find rest, where those who are tired of searching may cease to search, where there will be peace and quiet living, and no desire. Where shall the weary find peace? Upon what shore will the wanderer come home at last? When shall it cease—the blind groping, the false desires, the fruitless ambitions that grow despicable as soon as they are reached, the vain contest with phantoms, the maddening and agony of the brain and spirit in all the rush and glare of living, the dusty tumult, the grinding, the shouting, the idiotic repetition of the streets, the sterile abundance, the sick gluttony, and the thirst which goes on drinking?
Out of one darkness the travellers have come to be taken into another, but for a moment one sees their faces, awful and still, all uplifted towards the ship. This is all: their words have vanished, all memory of the movements they made then has also vanished: one remembers only their silence and their still faces lifted in the phantasmal light of lost time; one sees them ever, still and silent, as they slide from darkness on the river of time; one sees them waiting at the ship’s great side, all silent and all damned to die, with their grave, white faces lifted in a single supplication to the ship, and towards the silent row of passengers along the deck, who for a moment return their gaze with the same grave and tranquil stare. That silent meeting is a summary of all the meetings of men’s lives: in the silence one hears the slow, sad breathing of humanity, one knows the human destiny.
“Oh, look!” the woman cried again. “Oh, see! Was ever anything more beautiful?” The ship’s great beetling cliff swept sheer above her. She turned the small, flushed flower of her face and saw the slant and reach and swell of the great prow, and music filled her. She lifted the small, flushed flower of her face and saw the many men so little, so lonely, silent, and intent,
