"Is the smile of the Sphinx all that indeed? I somehow thought it was something more intimate. But how serious you look! Do not frown--I would not offend you for the world." "Should I not smile?" he said bitterly. "Yes, like the Sphinx." "Quick! How, did you know that?" "Don't frighten me. I was but speaking idly." "Idly?" "Seriously then, if you like--since you attach such importance to it. Women always work by miracles and never know when they have performed one.... Excellent, you are smiling, though your smile is ambiguous." "I do but obey her." "Not me?" "That smile which we behold on her face is the smile we see everywhere about us; only in her it has become more august--first by reason of her greater consciousness of isolation in the Desert and beneath the Stars, and, secondly, by consciousness of her strength." "Will you hand me my fan? Thank you." "For what are not the properties of the smile--the sovereign beauty, the witness of power--in Nature? Wise indeed the man who knows the bounds of what it is capable. When we are born the first thing we behold is a smile: the Nurse smiles at us, and in that smile we should read--were we then capable--the self-satisfaction of Nature, proud of her reproductive powers, who dandles us in her hands with the assurance that she knows what is best for us. Ah, how universal is the smile! Think of the variety of smiles that exist. 'Tis all for smiles this life! And that is at once its apparent cruelty and its final justification. On the blackness of Eternity it expands in a smile like a rainbow--a rainbow whose arch begins and ends, as rainbow arches do, uncertain where. And this blossoming in Infinity justifies itself.... How? By the beauty of its smile. Therefore smile. Smile and be in harmony with--if not the spirit of the Universe (for the unknown looking down from the Hill of Heaven upon the Rainbow may for all we know smile also, and on the import of that smile opinion may be divided), and be in harmony at least with the beauty of that fragment of the Universe which, if we do not wholly comprehend, we can at least worship and imitate.... But you are yawning." "No, obedient to you, I was--smiling."