Page:The Quest Volume 11 (1919-20).djvu/556

 "Suddenly I realized then and there what Time is. We ourselves are forms made out of Time—bodies that seem to be matter, but are no more than coagulated Time. And our daily withering away towards the grave—what is it but our returning unto Time again, waiting and hoping being but the symptoms of this process, even as ice on a stove hisses away as it changes back to water again?

"I now saw that, as this knowledge woke in my mind, trembling seized upon my double, and that his face was contorted with terror. Then I knew what I had to do; to fight unto the death with every weapon against those phantoms that suck our life away like vampires.

"Oh! they know full well why they remain invisible for man, why they hide themselves from our eyes—those parasites of our life!—even as it is the devil's most foul device to act as if he did not exist. Since then I have for ever rooted out of my life the two ideas of hoping and waiting."

"I am sure," I said, when the old gentleman fell to silence, "I should break down at the first step, if I tried to tread the terrible way along which you have walked. I can well believe that by incessant labour a man may benumb the feeling of waiting and hoping in his soul; but

"Yes, but only benumb it," he interrupted. "Within you the waiting still remains alive. You must put the axe to the root. Become as an automaton in this world, as one dead though seemingly alive. Never reach out after a tempting fruit, if there is to be the shortest waiting for it. Do not stir a hand; and all will fall ripe into your lap. At the beginning, and for long perchance, it may be like a