all the day, see earth behind them gleaming when an evening falls, and
again are loth to leave its pleasant haunts, and come back again
through dark woods and up into some old loved chamber, and ever tarry
between home and flight and find no rest.

Thou wilt set forth at once because the journey is far and lasts for
many hours; but the hours on the velvet spaces are the hours of the
gods, and we may not say what time such an hour may be if reckoned in
mortal years.

At last thou shalt come to a grey place filled with mist, with grey
shapes standing before it which are altars, and on the altars rise
small red flames from dying fires that scarce illumine the mist. And in
the mist it is dark and cold because the fires are low. These are the
altars of the people's faiths, and the flames are the worship of men,
and through the mist the gods of Old go groping in the dark and in the
cold. There thou shalt hear a voice cry feebly: "Inyani, Inyani, lord
of the thunder, where art thou, for I cannot see?" And a voice shall
answer faintly in the cold: "O maker of many worlds, I am here." And in
that place the gods of Old are nearly deaf for the prayers of men grow
few, they are nigh blind because the fires burn low upon the altars of
men's faiths and they are very cold. And all about the place of mist
there lies a moaning sea which is called the Sea of Souls. And behind
the place of mist are the dim shapes of mountains, and on the peak of
one there glows a silvern light that shines in the moaning sea; and
ever as the flames on the altars die before the gods of Old the light
on the mountain increases, and the light shines over the mist and never
through it as the gods of Old grow blind. It is said that the light on
the mountain shall one day become a new god who is not of the gods of
Old.