THE EQUINOX
‘You are nearer the world than I, and its weak vanity has
stained you. The eye looks at the world, and the world looks
at the eye, and though each learns from the other, it is not often
an even bargain and exchange. . . .”
Then, as the heart-worm ceased to speak, the other two, the
eye-worm and the mouth-worm, drew closer to where during
all his talking they had been magnetically moved. And all
those years which they had passed unconsciously as the lips
or the eyes of a woman became suddenly revealed, most vividly
different to them.
They could not speak, the two detractors, for they had
learnt the wisdom and merit of sin. They knew that good and
evil are the same thing, that in a world of illusion he who has
the most illusions is the richest man, that to be wise unto
ignorance is the fairest counsel, that they knew nothing and
yet all, that...
And the heart-worm, whose judgment and reasonings had
been so readily accepted by the others, grew in his turn a
sceptic, since faith cannot live without doubt, and truth is
only co-existent with untruth, as day with night, as life with
death, as, O beloved! my heart with thine, as vain and coloured
chatterings like this with noble and inviolate silence.
Epwarb STORER.
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