Immediately and strangely she adds, as though troubled by some foreboding: "Don't take my illusion away from me." I was on the point of answering her, but I check myself, and just say, "Yes," as one throws a copper, and she goes away happy. * * * * * * My respect for life is so strong that I feel pity for a fly which I have killed. Observing the tiny corpse at the gigantic height of my eyes, I cannot help thinking how well made that organized speck of dust is, whose wings are little more than two drops of space, whose eye has four thousand facets; and that fly occupies my thought for a moment, which is a long time for it. * * * * * * CHAPTER XXII LIGHT I am leaning this evening out of the open window. As in bygone nights, I am watching the dark pictures, invisible at first, taking shape--the steeple towering out of the hollow, and broadly lighted against the hill; the castle, that rich crown of masonry; and then the massive sloping black of the chimney-peopled roofs, which are sharply outlined against the paler black of space, and some milky, watching windows. The eye is lost in all directions among the desolation where the multitude of men and women are hiding, as always and as everywhere. That is what is. Who will say, "That is what must be!" I have searched, I have indistinctly seen, I have doubted. Now, I hope. I do not regret my youth and its beliefs. Up to now, I have wasted my time to live. Youth is the true force, but it is too rarely lucid. Sometimes it has a triumphant liking for what is now, and the pugnacious broadside of paradox may please it. But there is a degree in innovation which they who have not lived very much cannot attain. And yet who knows if the stern greatness of present events will not have educated and aged the generation which to-day forms humanity's effective frontier? Whatever our hope may be, if we did not place it in youth, where should we place it? Who will speak--see, and then speak? To speak is the same thing as to see, but it is more. Speech perpetuates vision. We carry no light; we are things of shadow, for night closes our eyes, and we put out our hands to find our way when the light is gone; we only shine in speech; truth is made by the mouths of men. The wind of words--what is it? It is our breath--not all words, for there are artificial and copied ones which are not part of the speaker; but the profound words, the cries. In the human cry you feel the effort of the spring. The cry comes out of us, it is as living as a child. The cry goes on, and makes the appeal of truth wherever it may be, the cry gathers cries. There is a voice, a low and untiring voice, which helps those who do not and will not see themselves, a voice which brings them together, Books--the book we choose, the favorite, the book you open, which was waiting for you!