ut here his voice gave way. He
looked at me with anxiety in his eyes, and said no more.

'Then why,' I cried, 'do you go on? Why do you not stay?'

He shook his head, and his eyes grew more and more soft. 'I am going,' he
said, and his voice shook again. 'I am going--to try--the most awful and
the most dangerous journey--' His voice died away altogether, and he only
looked at me to say the rest.

'A journey? Where?'

I can tell no man what his eyes said. I understood, I cannot tell how;
and with trembling all my limbs seemed to drop out of joint and my face
grow moist with terror. I could not speak any more than he, but with my
lips shaped, How? The awful thought made a tremor in the very air around.
He shook his head slowly as he looked at me, his eyes, all circled with
deep lines, looking out of caves of anguish and anxiety; and then I
remembered how he had said, and I had scoffed at him, that the way he
sought was one he did not know. I had dropped his hands in my fear; and
yet to leave him seemed dragging the heart out of my breast, for none but
he had spoken to me like a brother, had taken my hand and thanked me. I
looked out across the plain, and the roads seemed tranquil and still.
There was a coolness in the air. It looked like evening, as if somewhere
in those far distances there might be a place where a weary soul might
rest; and I looked behind me, and thought what I had suffered, and
remembered the lazar-house and the voices that cried and the hands that
beat against the door, and also the horrible quiet of the room in which I
lived, and the eyes which looked in at me and turned my gaze upon myself.
Then I rushed after him, for he had turned to go on upon his way, and
caught at his clothes, crying, 'Behold me, behold me! I will go too!'

He reached me his hand and went on without a word; and I with terror
crept after him, treading in his steps, following like his shadow. What
it was to walk with another, and follow, and be at one, is more than I
can tell; but likewise my heart failed me for fear, for dread of what we
might encounter, and of hearing that name or entering that presence which
was more terrible than all torture. I wondered how it could be that one
should willingly face _that_ which racked the soul, and how he had
learned that it was possible, and where he had heard of the way. And as
we went on I said no word, for he began to seem to me a being of another
kind, a figure full of awe; and I fo