but his face was drawn with anguish and sorrow like
the face of my friend who had been with me in the lazar-house, who had
disappeared on the dark mountains. And as I looked at him, terror seized
hold upon me, and a desire to flee and save myself, that I might not be
drawn after him by the longing that was in his eyes.

The master gave me his hand to help me to rise, and it trembled, but not
like mine.

'Sir,' I cried, 'have not we enough to bear? Is it for hatred, is it for
vengeance, that you speak that name?'

'O friend,' he said, 'neither for hatred nor revenge. It is like a fire
in my veins; if one could find Him again!'

'You, who are as a god, who can make and destroy,--you, who could shake
His throne!'

He put up his hand. 'I who am His creature, even here--and still His
child, though I am so far, so far--' He caught my hand in his, and
pointed with the other trembling. 'Look! your eyes are more clear
than mine, for they are not anxious like mine. Can you see anything
upon the way?'

The waste lay wild before us, dark with a faintly-rising cloud, for
darkness and cloud and the gloom of death attended upon that name. I
thought, in his great genius and splendor of intellect, he had gone mad,
as sometimes may be. 'There is nothing,' I said, and scorn came into my
soul; but even as I spoke I saw--I cannot tell what I saw--a moving spot
of milky whiteness in that dark and miserable wilderness, no bigger than
a man's hand, no bigger than a flower. 'There is something,' I said
unwillingly; 'it has no shape nor form. It is a gossamer-web upon some
bush, or a butterfly blown on the wind.'

'There are neither butterflies nor gossamers here.'

'Look for yourself, then!' I cried, flinging his hand from me. I was
angry with a rage which had no cause. I turned from him, though I loved
him, with a desire to kill him in my heart, and hurriedly took the other
way. The waste was wild; but rather that than to see the man who might
have shaken earth and hell thus turning, turning to madness and the awful
journey. For I knew what in his heart he thought; and I knew that it was
so. It was something from that other sphere; can I tell you what? A child
perhaps--O thought that wrings the heart!--for do you know what manner of
thing a child is? There are none in the land of darkness. I turned my
back upon the place where that whiteness was. On, on, across the waste!
On to the cities of the night! On, far away from maddening tho