- 
fore her dizzying brain and  arose that awful 
vision of Lucretius, of the homeless universe fall- 
ing, falling, falling, for ever from nowhence toward 
nowhither through the unending ages, by cause- 
less and unceasing gravitation, while the changes 
and efforts of all mortal  were but the jostling 
of the dust-atoms amid the everlasting storm. . . . 
It could not be ! There was a truth, a virtue, a 
beauty, a nobleness, which could never change, but 
which were absolute, the same for ever. The God- 
given instinct of her woman's  rebelled against 
her intellect, and, in the name of God, denied its 
lie. . . . Yes, there was virtue, beauty. . . . 
And yet might not they, too, be accidents of 
that , which man calls mortal life; 
temporary and mutable accidents of conscious- 
ness ; brilliant sparks, struck out by the clashing 
of the dust-atoms? Who could tell? 



Seeking After a Sign 187 

There were those once who could tell. Did 
not Plotinus speak of a direct mystic intuition of 
the Deity, an  without wordnetdesire, a still 
 of the , in which she rose above 
life, thought, reason, herself, to that which she 
contemplated, the absolute and first One,