I am an old man, and unless I find the secret of life here, in this very room, before many years are over, I must die--die, do you understand?
Do you know what it means to die?
How can you comprehend that word--you girl, you child, you thing of five and twenty summers!" "It was to be supposed that your own fears were at the root of your anger," observed Unorna, sitting down upon her chair and calmly folding her hands as though to wait until the storm should pass over.
"Is there anything at the root of anything except Self?
You moth, you butterfly, you thread of floating gossamer! How can you understand the incalculable value of Self--of that which is all to me and nothing to you, or which, being yours, is everything to you and to me nothing?
You are so young--you still believe in things, and interests, and good and evil, and love and hate, truth and falsehood, and a hundred notions which are not facts, but only contrasts between one self and another! What were you doing here when I found you playing with life and death, perhaps with my life, for a gipsy trick, in the crazy delusion that this old parcel of humanity can see the shadows of things which are not yet?
I saw, I heard.

How could he answer anything save that which was in your own mind, when you were forcing him with your words and your eyes to make a reply of some sort, or perish?
Ah! You see now.

You understand now.

I have opened your eyes a little.

Why did he hesitate, and suffer?
Because you asked that to which he knew there was no answer.