Her words rung like a tocsin of the bright romance conjured up by the avowal of their love.
It seemed to him, in that instant, they had no separate existence as distinguished from the great stream of human life--the turbulent river that flowed unceasingly from an eternity of the past to an eternity of the future.

For a day, a year, a decade, two frail bubbles danced on the surface and raced joyously together in the sunshine; then they were broken--did it matter how, by savage sword or lingering ailment?
They vanished--absorbed again by the rushing waters--and other bubbles rose in precarious iridescence.

It was a fatalist view of life, a dim and obscurantist groping after truth induced by the overpowering nature of present difficulties.

The famous Tentmaker of Naishapur blindly sought the unending purpose when he wrote:-- "Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate, And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not the Master-Knot of Human Fate.
"There was the Door to which I found no Key; There was the Veil through which I could not see: Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was--and then no more of Thee and Me." The sailor, too, wrestled with the great problem.

He may be pardoned if his heart quailed and he groaned aloud.
"Iris," he said solemnly, "whatever happens, unless I am struck dead at your feet, I promise you that we shall pass the boundary hand in hand.
Be mine the punishment if we have decided wrongly.