by jealousy. Ceaselessly his mind
was at work about this woman, picturing her in her life of change, of
intrigue, of new lovers, of new hopes and aims in which he had no part,
in which his image was being blotted out, doubtless from her memory
even. He suffered, he suffered as few suffer. But I think I suffered
more. The melancholy was driven on into a gnawing hunger, the gnawing
hunger of the flesh wishing to have lived, wishing to live, wishing
to--to know.

"Domini, to you I can't say more of that--to you whom I--whom I love
with spirit and flesh. I will come to the end, to the incident which
made the body rise up, strike down the soul, trample out over it into
the world like a wolf that was starving.

"One day the Reverend Pere gave me a special permission to walk with our
visitor beyond the monastery walls towards the sea. Such permission was
an event in my life. It excited me more than you can imagine. I found
that the stranger had begged him to let me come.

"'Our guest is very fond of you,' the Reverend Pere said to me. 'I think
if any human being can bring him to a calmer, happier state of mind and
spirit, you can. You have obtained a good influence over him.'

"Domini, when the Reverend Pere spoke to me thus my mouth was suddenly
contracted in a smile. Devil's smile, I think. I put up my hand to
my face. I saw the Reverend Pere looking at me with a dawning of
astonishment in his kind, grave eyes, and I controlled myself at once.
But I said nothing. I could not say anything, and I went out from the
parlour quickly, hot with a sensation of shame.

"'You are coming?' the stranger said.

"'Yes,' I answered.

"It was a fiery day of late June. Africa was bathed in a glare of
light that hurt the eyes. I went into my cell and put on a pair of blue
glasses and my wide straw hat, the hat in which I formerly used to work
in the fields. When I came out my guest was standing on the garden path.
He was swinging a stick in one hand. The other hand, which hung down by
his side, was twitching nervously. In the glitter of the sun his face
looked ghastly. In his eyes there seemed to be terrors watching without
hope.

"'You are ready?' he said. 'Let us go.'

"We set off, walking quickly.

"'Movement--pace--sometimes that does a little good,' he said. 'If one
can exhaust the body the mind sometimes lies almost still for a moment.
If it would only lie still for ever.'

"I said nothing. I could say nothing. For my feve