Alwyn sat for a minute silent and thoughtful. "A descending of the Divine into Humanity!" he repeated slowly--"It seems to me that 'miracle' is forever being enacted--and yet ... we doubt!"
"WE do not doubt--" said Heliobas--"WE know,--we have touched Reality! But see yonder!"--and he pointed through the window to the crowded thoroughfare below--"There are the flying phantoms of life,--the men and women who are God-oblivious, and who are therefore no more actually LIVING than the shadows of Al-Kyris! They shall pass as a breath and be no more,--and this roaring, trafficking metropolis, this immediate centre of civilization, shall ere long disappear off the surface of the earth, and leave not a stone to mark the spot where once it stood! So have thousands of such cities fallen since this planet was flung into space,--and even so shall thousands still fall. Learning, civilization, science, progress,--these things exist merely for the training and education of a chosen few--and out of many earth centuries and generations of men, shall be won only a very small company of angels! Be glad that you have fathomed the mystery of your own life's purpose,--for you are now as much a Positive Identity among vanishing spectres, as you were when, on the Field of Ardath, you witnessed and took part in the Mirage of your Past."