at planet, was that optical absurdity moving now?

Hardly had he recalled the legend and pictured in his imagination
the dark apparition he had seen in the rye-field, when, from behind
a pine-tree exactly opposite, there came out noiselessly, without
the slightest rustle, a man of medium height with uncovered grey
head, all in black, and barefooted like a beggar, and his black
eyebrows stood out conspicuously on his pale, death-like face.
Nodding his head graciously, this beggar or pilgrim came noiselessly
to the seat and sat down, and Kovrin recognised him as the black
monk.

For a minute they looked at one another, Kovrin with amazement, and
the monk with friendliness, and, just as before, a little slyness,
as though he were thinking something to himself.

"But you are a mirage," said Kovrin. "Why are you here and sitting
still? That does not fit in with the legend."

"That does not matter," the monk answered in a low voice, not
immediately turning his face towards him. "The legend, the mirage,
and I are all the products of your excited imagination. I am a
phantom."

"Then you don't exist?" said Kovrin.

"You can think as you like," said the monk, with a faint smile. "I
exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature,
so I exist in nature."

"You have a very old, wise, and extremely expressive face, as though
you really had lived more than a thousand years," said Kovrin. "I
did not know that my imagination was capable of creating such
phenomena. But why do you look at me with such enthusiasm? Do you
like me?"

"Yes, you are one of those few who are justly called the chosen of
God. You do the service of eternal truth. Your thoughts, your
designs, the marvellous studies you are engaged in, and all your
life, bear the Divine, the heavenly stamp, seeing that they are
consecrated to the rational and the beautiful--that is, to what
is eternal."

"You said 'eternal truth.' . . . But is eternal truth of use to man
and within his reach, if there is no eternal life?"

"There is eternal life," said the monk.

"Do you believe in the immortality of man?"

"Yes, of course. A grand, brilliant future is in store for you men.
And the more there are like you on earth, the sooner will this
future be realised. Without you who serve the higher principle and
live in full understanding and freedom, mankind would be of little
account; developing in a natural way, it would have to wait a long
time for the e