Then she did something as strange, as shocking, as if she had thrown off her clothes.She smiled.

- Вот она, истина. Не в серпе и молоте. Не в звездах и полосах. Не в распятии. Не в солнце. Не в золоте. Не в инь и ян. В улыбке.

So that the smile was not so much an attitude to be taken to life as the nature of the cruelty of life, a cruelty we cannot even choose to avoid, since it is human existence.

Because they died, we know we still live. Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.