'Yes--an old way,' she repeated, as if to say the words so that they
should be natural to her. And I became to her merely a transient
circumstance, a man, part of the surroundings. We divided the gift of
speech, that was all.
She glanced at me again, with her wonderful, unchanging eyes, that were
like the visible heavens, unthinking, or like two flowers that are open
in pure clear unconsciousness. To her I was a piece of the environment.
That was all. Her world was clear and absolute, without consciousness of
self. She was not self-conscious, because she was not aware that there
was anything in the universe except _her_ universe. In her universe I
was a stranger, a foreign _signore_. That I had a world of my own, other
than her own, was not conceived by her. She did not care.
So we conceive the stars. We are told that they are other worlds. But
the stars are the clustered and single gleaming lights in the night-sky
of our world. When I come home at night, there are the stars. When I
cease to exist as the microcosm, when I begin to think of the cosmos,
then the stars are other worlds.
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