We know nothing about it. All we know is that there is a perpetual and prodigious expenditure of energy going on, the vast bulk of which is, so far as we can see, absolute waste. Of the heat which the earth actually receives from the sun, of the earth's own heat, enormous quantities are radiating into space every moment, and are, at least so far as we are concerned, to all appearances, completely lost. The time is conceivable, if it is not actually realisable, in which the earth will be like the moon—in which the sun will be like the moon. What will have come to the energy which they have given off? Who can say? This idea of the everlasting potpourri of animate and inanimate life on the earth is an exaggerated, if it is not quite a false one. Not only does the conscious ego become extinguished, but the unconscious elements of us suffer very little or nothing of the unending transmigrations (to use the old word) which seem to some minds so horrible. I retain unimpaired my belief in Death. It is the one certainty—the one need—the one consolation. This is the love of Nature, that the same peace awaits us all.'
'Ah!' said Randal. 'Now I have the philosophic and metaphysical basis of an aborted poem of yours which I picked up in your studio a few months ago. It was in a little black, glazy notebook on the table
