Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 11.pdf/188

 "Everlastingly you may conquer and find fresh worlds to conquer."

"May—but shall I?"

It was as if the torrent of molten thoughts stopped suddenly. It was as if everything stopped.

"Answer me," he cried.

Slowly the shining thoughts moved on again.

"So long as your courage endures you will conquer

"If you have courage, although the night be dark, although the present battle be bloody and cruel and end in a strange and evil fashion, nevertheless victory shall be yours—in a way you will understand—when victory comes. Only have courage. On the courage in your heart all things depend. By courage it is that the stars continue in their courses, day by day. It is the courage of life alone that keeps sky and earth apart If that courage fail, if that sacred fire go out, then all things fail and all things go out, all things—good and evil, space and time."

"Leaving nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing," he echoed, and the word spread like a dark and darkening mask across the face of all things.

And then as if to mark the meaning of the word, it seemed to him that the whole universe began to move inward upon itself, faster and faster, until at last with an incredible haste it rushed together. He resisted this collapse in vain, and with a sense of overwhelmed effort. The white light of God and the whirling colours of the universe, the spaces between the stars—it was as if an unseen fist gripped them