156 MYSTERIES. 
symbol for immortality. You cannot have for- 
gotten all the beautiful illustrations drawn from 
the dragon-fly and the chrysalis ? ” 
“ Oh, no ! but I am so miserably practical, 
none of those ever touched me, as what you tell 
me of the siredon does. None of those were 
like us — completing the whole circle of a life; 
birth, growth, reproduction — all the functions 
that are necessary to a continued series of exist- 
ence, before they reached their highest state; I 
did not know that any creature did, or could. So 
your little siredon, who fills all the terms of animal 
life that our genus does, with still before him a 
higher form of existence, only awaiting right con- 
ditions for its realization, fascinates me. He in- 
deed proves that nature is not always content 
with the simple completion of the circle of being, 
but in some cases may add to it, that for which 
we so deeply yearn — a physically unnecessary, 
but still higher, and more perfect stage of de- 
velopment.” A vision of vanished faces and 
absent forms my arms may never clasp on earth 
again was with me, and a wave of that passionate 
longing— which only those who have felt it can 
understand — for life in yet another element — to 
which I might believe the silent ones had gone, 
and to which the absent ones and I might go — 
dashed its spray in my eyes, and filled my throat 
with an unvoiced sob. “ Oh,” I cried, “ that 
