and of the
mighty civilisations which for uncounted ages he and his forefathers had
ruled by the strength of their will and knowledge, of the dwindling
of their race and of the final destruction of its enemies, although I
noticed that now he no longer said that this was his work alone. One
night I asked him if he did not miss all such pomp and power.

Then suddenly he broke out, and for the first time I really learned what
ambition can be when it utterly possesses the soul of man.

"Are you mad," he asked, "that you suppose that I, Oro, the King of
kings, can be content to dwell solitary in a great cave with none but
the shadows of the dead to serve me? Nay, I must rule again and be even
greater than before, or else I too will die. Better to face the future,
even if it means oblivion, than to remain thus a relic of a glorious
past, still living and yet dead, like that statue of the great god Fate
which you saw in the temple of my worship."

"Bastin does not think that the future means oblivion," I remarked.

"I know it. I have studied his faith and find it too humble for my
taste, also too new. Shall I, Oro, creep a suppliant before any Power,
and confess what Bastin is pleased to call my sins? Nay, I who am great
will be the equal of all greatness, or nothing."

He paused a while, then went on:

"Bastin speaks of 'eternity.' Where and what then is this eternity which
if it has no end can have had no beginning? I know the secret of the
suns and their attendant worlds, and they are no more eternal than the
insect which glitters for an hour. Out of shapeless, rushing gases they
gathered to live their day, and into gases at last they dissolve again
with all they bore."

"Yes," I answered, "but they reform into new worlds."

"That have no part with the old. This world, too, will melt, departing
to whence it came, as your sacred writings say, and what then of those
who dwelt and dwell thereon? No, Man of today, give me Time in which I
rule and keep your dreams of an Eternity that is not, and in which you
must still crawl and serve, even if it were. Yet, if I might, I confess
it, I would live on for ever, but as Master not as Slave."

On another night he began to tempt me, very subtly. "I see a spark of
greatness in you, Humphrey," he said, "and it comes into my heart that
you, too, might learn to rule. With Yva, the last of my blood, it is
otherwise. She is the child of my age and of a race outworn; too gentle,