lustrous abyss of
cool green shade, deepening on and inward, pillar after pillar, vista
after vista, into deepest night. And dimly through the gloom he could
descry, on every wall and column, gorgeous arabesques, long lines of
pictured story; triumphs and labours; rows of captives in foreign and
fantastic dresses, leading strange animals, bearing the tributes of
unknown lands; rows of ladies at feasts, their heads crowned with
garlands, the fragrant lotus-flower in every hand, while slaves brought
wine and perfumes, and children sat upon their knees, and husbands by
their side; and dancing girls, in transparent robes and golden girdles,
tossed their tawny limbs wildly among the throng.... What was the
meaning of it all? Why had it all been? Why had it gone on thus, the
great world, century after century, millennium after millennium, eating
and drinking, and marrying and giving in marriage, and knowing nothing
better.... how could they know anything better? Their forefathers had
lost the light ages and ages before they were born.... And Christ had
not come for ages and ages after they were dead.... How could they
know?.... And yet they were all in hell.... every one of them. Every one
of these ladies who sat there, with her bushy locks, and garlands, and
jewelled collars, and lotus-flowers, and gauzy dress, displaying all her
slender limbs-who, perhaps, when she was alive, smiled so sweetly, and
went so gaily, and had children, and friends, and never once thought of
what was going to happen to her--what must happen to her.... She was in
hell.... Burning for ever, and ever, and ever, there below his feet. He
stared down on the rocky floors. If he could but see through them....
and the eye of faith could see through them.... he should behold her
writhing and twisting among the flickering flame, scorched, glowing....
in everlasting agony, such as the thought of enduring for a moment made
him shudder. He had burnt his hands once, when a palm-leaf but caught
fire.... He recollected what that was like.... She was enduring ten
thousand times more than that for ever. He should hear her shrieking
in vain for a drop of water to cool her tongue.... He had never heard a
human being shriek but once.... a boy bathing on the opposite Nile bank,
whom a crocodile had dragged down.... and that scream, faint and distant
as it came across the mighty tide, had rung intolerable in his ears
for days.... and to think of all which echoed through t