After that everything was night, and gloom, and darkness to Johannes. He saw the bier on fire--consumed to a pile of burning coals--and the thick, black smoke enveloped him. But also he saw, last of all, the shining white figure moving beside Mother Earth, irradiating the night and the smoke. He saw Him coming--bending down to him His radiant face until it embraced the entire heavens. Then he recognized his Guide. PART III I The warm tears for Father Pan were still flowing down his cheeks, when Johannes lifted up his eyes with the consciousness of being awake. That which met his gaze was exactly what he had last seen--the comforting face of his exalted Brother enveloped by a dun swirl of smoke. But now it looked different, or else it was perceived through another sense--like the same story told in another tongue--like the same music played upon an instrument of different timbre: neither finer nor more effective, but simpler and more sober. He found himself sitting on the slope of a mountain, and saw Markus bending over him. The sun had set, and the valley lay in twilight, yet in the dusk one could see the glow of fiery furnaces--could see tall factory-chimneys out of whose huge throats there rolled great billows of murky smoke, like dirty wool. The whole valley and everything that grew on the mountain-side was smirched with black. A constant humming and buzzing, pounding and resounding, rose up from that city of bare, blackened buildings. At intervals there flared up from the furnace bluish yellow and violet flames, like glowing, streaming pennants. The land looked gloomy and desolate, as if laid waste by lava; yet now and then, as a rotary oven belched out a flood of brilliant sparks, the grey air was lighted up for miles beyond. "Markus," said Johannes, his heart still heavy with sorrow, "Pan is dead!" "Pan is dead!" said Markus in return. "But your Brother lives." "Thank God for that. What brought you here?" "I am among the miners, Johannes, and the factory operatives. They need me." "Oh, my Brother! I too need you. I do not know where in the world to go ... and Pan is dead!" Johannes embraced the right arm of Markus, and rested his head against his Brother's shoulder. Thus sitting, he was a long time silent. He gazed at the clouded valley with its colossal mine-wheel, the black chimneys and ovens, the black, yellow, and blue-white wreaths of vapor, the great iron sheds, and the many-windowed buildings devoid of ornament and color.