White rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white rocks. Everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit and with its own comrades. Siegmund alone was without pursuit or comrade.
“They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena, after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do I matter?”
Siegmund thought of the futility of death:
“We are not long for music and laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think we have no portion in them after
We pass the gate.”
“Why should I be turned out of the game?” he asked himself, rebelling. He frowned, and answered: “Oh, Lord!—the old argument!”
But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
“Like the puff from the steamer’s funnel, I should be gone.”
He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
“Nothing, in the place where I am,” he said. “Gone, like a puff of steam that melts on the sunshine.”
Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at a joke.
“And I,” he said, lying down in the warm sand, “I am nothing. I do not count; I am inconsiderable.”
He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A convulsive gasping shook him
