It meant to endure to the last rolling grain of sand.

It was a dead mountain of rock, without spirit, yet it taught a grand lesson to the seeing eye.
Life was only a part, perhaps an infinitely small part of nature's plan.
Death and decay were just as important to her inscrutable design.

The universe had not been created for life, ease, pleasure, and happiness of a man creature developed from lower organisms.

If nature's secret was the developing of a spirit through all time, Carley divined that she had it within her.

So the present meant little.
"I have no right to be unhappy," concluded Carley.