It is of me he ceases to think! I fail! (_He disappears._) AMBITION It is the end! THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE (_Stretching prone in space and all but vanishing. Only faint outlines are visible here and there, the brow and face intact._) Peace! Peace! It is enough! It is enough! I have done! Let it be as it ever was from everlasting to everlasting--a dream--a dream! Oh, ho, ho, ho! (_He sighs heavily. The last writhing beasts thin and are gone._ AMBITION, _paling and thinning, stands wide-eyed, agape, before the fading brow of the Lord_.) AMBITION At last! And I--it is of me he ceases to think--even me! I have done! I have done! (_He vanishes._) BEAUTY (_A thin star in the brow of the Lord, glistering and yet paling._) It is even of me he ceases to think! Lord, hast thou forgotten thy first-born? THE LORD OF THE UNIVERSE Peace! Peace! Enter thou into me! (_He sighs and begins to vanish completely._) BEAUTY (_Fading into his sleep._) I will be worshiped! I will be worshiped! (_She smiles._) _The illusion of reality ceases. Suns and planets are gone. Time and Space are not. That which was is as that which was not._ ASHTORETH What has impressed me most about life, always, is the freshness and newness of everything, the perennial upwelling of life in every form; the manner in which, as age steals on for some, youth, new, innocent, inexperienced, believing, takes charge, its eyes alight with aspiration, its body ablaze with desire. We know that the world is old, old, and societies also in every form, while the average span of life for the individual is little more than forty years--yet step into the streets and witness the immemorable clangor and newness, the present visible portion of the unbroken thread or pattern that reaches back into eternity. And for all that life is so old, old, and atoms of the life pattern or chain are feeble, is life old? Does the bit of thread or pattern that we see here now show the least evidence of wear or tear? Is not the race as new, as fresh as ever? We rise betimes and the ancient sunlight streams fresh and strong and _new_ into our passing window--this window which, in a few years, will be as forgotten and as non-recoverable as we ourselves shall be. And the ways without--are they crowded with the aged, the worn, the soul-weary? Here and there, perhaps, a halting, bent or time-worn specimen that attracts attention for its _age_! In the main, at every turn, youth is in charge, laughing, singing, whistling, the newest modes of the _Zeitgeist_ adorning it, the latest coats, the latest hats, the latest shoes heightening the charm of bodies utterly evanescent. The percentage of the really aged abroad is as one to one hundred--one thousand. Viewing the swift tides of life as they burble in the great thoroughfares they are utterly negligible. And it is always so. A large crowd of the old and the weak and the defective would be an astounding sight anywhere in life that is so old.