s we gamed away the hours. From Asiatic plateaus we
swept to Nilotic slime. We roamed in primeval forests, vast
and arboreally sublime, or sported with the behemoth and
listened to the serpent's sinuous irony; we chattered with
the sacred apes and mouthed at the moon; and in the Long Ago
wore the carapace and danced forthright figures on
coprolitic sands--sands stretching into the bosom of the
earth, sands woven of windy reaches hemming the sun.... We
lay with the grains of corn in Egyptian granaries, and saw
them fructify under the smile of the sphinx; we buzzed in
the ambient atmosphere, gaudy dragon-flies or whirling motes
in full cry chased by humming-birds. Then from some cold
crag we launched with wings of fire-breathing pestilence and
fell fathoms under sea to war with lizard-fish and narwhal.
For us the supreme surrender, the joy of the expected....
With cynical glance we saw the Buddha give way to other
gods. We watched protoplasmically the birth of planets and
the confusion of creation. We saw horned monsters become
gentle ruminants, and heard the scream of the pterodactyl on
the tree-tops dwindle to child's laughter. We heard, we saw,
we felt, we knew. Yet hoped we on; every monad has his
day.... One by one the billions disintegrated and floated
into formal life. And we watched and waited. Our evolution
had been the latest delayed; until heartsick with longing
many of my brethren wished for annihilation....

At last I was alone, save one. The time of my fruition was
not afar. O! for the moment when I should realize my
dreams.... I saw this last one swept away, swept down the
vistas toward life, the thunderous surge singing in her
ears. O! that my time would come. At last, after vague
alarms, I was summoned....

The hour had struck; eternity was left behind, eternity
loomed ahead, implacable, furrowed with Time's scars. I
hastened to the only one in the Cosmos. I tarried not as I
ran in the race. Moments were precious; a second meant aeons;
and crashing into the light--Alas! I was too late.... Of
what avail my travail, my countless, cruel preparations? O
Chance! O Fate! I am one of the silent multitude of the
Frustrate....

When she had finished reading this strange study in evolut