'No,' said he pitiably to himself, 'it is impossible it should have hurt
me. I suppose I was careless.' Nevertheless, the aspect of the morning changed. He sat on the boulder
looking out on the sea. The azure sky and the sea laughed on, holding a
bright conversation one with another. The two headlands of the tiny bay
gossiped across the street of water. All the boulders and pebbles of the
sea-shore played together.
'Surely,' said Siegmund, 'they take no notice of me; they do not care a
jot or a tittle for me. I am a fool to think myself one with them.' He contrasted this with the kindness of the morning as he had stood on
the cliffs.
'I was mistaken,' he said. 'It was an illusion.' He looked wistfully out again. Like neighbours leaning from opposite
windows of an overhanging street, the headlands were occupied one with
another. White rocks strayed out to sea, followed closely by other white
rocks. Everything was busy, interested, occupied with its own pursuit
and with its own comrades. Siegmund alone was without pursuit
or comrade.
'They will all go on the same; they will be just as gay. Even Helena,
after a while, will laugh and take interest in others. What do
I matter?' Siegmund thought of the futility of death: We are not long for music and laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think we have no portion in them after
We pass the gate.
'Why should I be turned out of the game?' he asked himself, rebelling.
He frowned, and answered: 'Oh, Lord!--the old argument!' But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
'Like the puff from the steamer's funnel, I should be gone.' He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his
maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
'Nothing, in the place where I am,' he said. 'Gone, like a puff of steam
that melts on the sunshine.' Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at
a joke.
'And I,' he said, lying down in the warm sand, 'I am nothing. I do not
count; I am inconsiderable.' He set his teeth with pain. There were no tears, there was no relief. A
convulsive gasping shook him as he lay on the sands. All the while he
was arguing with himself.
'Well,' he said, 'if I am nothing dead I am nothing alive.' But the vulgar proverb arose--'Better a live dog than a dead lion,' to
answer him. It seemed an ignominy to be dead. It meant, to be
overlooked, even by the smallest creature of God's earth. Surely that
was a great ignominy.