ance, on the slopes of
which they were building their little palaces.

"First I despised them, and then I loved them. But I shuddered at the
thought that I, an unknown person, unknown to myself and unrecognised
by a God, should love people equally unknown--a shadow loved other
shadows, and like a shadow I trembled.

"When I learned to love, I felt like a god--just as when the sun
learned to warm, he knew that he was a sun. I became like a sun over a
little world, and people who did not understand basked in my light and
heat.

"But one day love was lost in a cloud, as the sun is lost in a mist
which it itself has raised from the earth, and I thought: 'What a
fool am I, content to dwell among such people, and be as a king over
_them_. All that divides me from them is that I know that I know not,
and they do not even know that. For they rank their earth knowledge as
something more worthy than all their ignorance. I will go forth into
the world, and seek for those who are like myself, irreconcilable in
front of the inexplicable.'

"I sought them in towns and found them not, for the people, like
foolish virgins forgetful of the bridegroom, slumbered and slept. I
sought them upon deserts and mountains, and upon the wild plains, but
there man was of the earth and beautiful, though not aware of his
kingdom beyond the earth. But in the country places I met wise old men
who kept candles burning before my shrine, and in the houses of the
poor I met the body-wearied, world-defeated, and they, having lost
all, found the one hope that I cherished. And in the pages of books,
by converse with the dead, I found the great spiritual brotherhood.

"We are many upon the world--we irreconcilables. We cry inconsolably
like lost children, 'Oh, ye Gods, have ye forgotten us? Oh, ye Gods,
or servants of gods, who abandoned us here, remember us!'

"For perhaps we are kidnapped persons. Perhaps thrones lie vacant on
some stars because we are hidden away here upon the earth. I for one
have a royal seal on my bosom, a mysterious mark, the sign of a royal
house. Ah, my brothers, we are all scions of that house.

"One day I met a man who voluntarily sought death in order to
penetrate the mystery of the beyond. But no sign showed itself forth
to us, and we know not whether by his desperate deed he won what we
have lost, or whether, perchance, he lost all that we can ever win.

"The burden of my ignorance is hard to bear," he cried. The burden