left them sleeping or that they had not followed in
the right direction. Taking up the cloak, I was about to walk on, when
I noticed the spear he had thrown at me lying where it had fallen some
yards away, and picking that up also, I went on once more, still keeping
the guiding star before me.

CHAPTER XX

That good fight had been to me like a draught of wine, and made me for
a while oblivious of my loss and of the pain from my wound. But the glow
and feeling of exultation did not last: the lacerated flesh smarted; I
was weak from loss of blood, and oppressed with sensations of fatigue.
If my foes had appeared on the scene they would have made an easy
conquest of me; but they came not, and I continued to walk on, slowly
and painfully, pausing often to rest.

At last, recovering somewhat from my faint condition, and losing all
fear of being overtaken, my sorrow revived in full force, and thought
returned to madden me.

Alas! this bright being, like no other in its divine brightness, so long
in the making, now no more than a dead leaf, a little dust, lost and
forgotten for ever--oh, pitiless! Oh, cruel!

But I knew it all before--this law of nature and of necessity, against
which all revolt is idle: often had the remembrance of it filled me with
ineffable melancholy; only now it seemed cruel beyond all cruelty.

Not nature the instrument, not the keen sword that cuts into the
bleeding tissues, but the hand that wields it--the unseen unknown
something, or person, that manifests itself in the horrible workings of
nature.

"Did you know, beloved, at the last, in that intolerable heat, in that
moment of supreme anguish, that he is unlistening, unhelpful as the
stars, that you cried not to him? To me was your cry; but your poor,
frail fellow creature was not there to save, or, failing that, to cast
himself into the flames and perish with you, hating God."

Thus, in my insufferable pain, I spoke aloud; alone in that solitary
place, a bleeding fugitive in the dark night, looking up at the stars
I cursed the Author of my being and called on Him to take back the
abhorred gift of life.

Yet, according to my philosophy, how vain it was! All my bitterness and
hatred and defiance were as empty, as ineffectual, as utterly futile,
as are the supplications of the meek worshipper, and no more than the
whisper of a leaf, the light whirr of an insect's wing. Whether I loved
Him who was over all, as when I thanked Him on my kn