For Truth is as the sand of the shore for number, and as the infinite hues of the rainbow for variety.

Yet the sand is ground out of one mother rock, and all the colours of earth and air are born of a single sun.
So, practising the ancient rites and mysteries, and bowing himself to the ancient law whose primeval principles every man and woman may find graven upon the tablets of their solitary heart, Morris set himself to find that truth, which for him was hid in the invisible soul of Stella, the soul which he desired to behold and handle, even if the touch and sight should slay him.
Day by day he worked, for as many hours as he could make his own, at the details of his new experiments.

These in themselves were interesting, and promised even to be fruitful; but that was not his object, or, at any rate, his principal object in pursuing them with such an eager passion of research.

The talk and hazardings which had passed between himself and Stella notwithstanding, both reason and experience had taught him already that all instruments made by the hand of man were useless to break a way into the dwellings of the departed.

A day might come when they would enable the inhabitants of the earth to converse with the living denizens of the most distant stars; but never, never with the dead.