nd gazed, Harry stepped forward into the arena.
"This also?" I whispered.

He nodded, and led the way over the copper floor, where the water ran
high as our ankles and again was drained off, until little dry spaces
grew like maps upon the surface, and in ten seconds were flooded again.
He led me straight to the cages, and I saw that while the roof and three
sides of these were of sheet iron, the fourth side, which faced the
throne, lay open. And I saw--in the first cage, a man scourged with
rods; in the second, a body twisted on the rack; in the third, a woman
with a starving babe, and a fellow that held food to them and withdrew
it quickly (the torturers wore masks on their faces, and whenever blood
flowed some threw handfuls of sawdust, and blood and sawdust together
were carried off by the running water); in the fourth cage, a man tied,
naked and helpless, whom a masked torturer pelted with discs of gold,
heavy and keen-edged; in the fifth a brasier with irons heating, and a
girl's body crouched in a corner--

"I will see no more!" I cried, and turned towards the great purple
canopy. High over it the sun broke yellow on the climbing tiers of
seats. "Harry! someone is watching behind those curtains! Is it--HE?"

Harry bent his head.

"But this is all that I believed! This is Nero, and ten times worse
than Nero! Why did you bring me here?" I flung out my hand towards the
purple throne, and finding myself close to a fellow who scattered
sawdust with both hands, made a spring to tear his mask away. But Harry
stretched out an arm.

"That will not help you," he said. "The man has no face."

"No face!"

"He once had a face, but it has perished. His was the face of these
sufferers. Look at them."

I looked from cage to cage, and now saw that indeed all these
sufferers--men and women--had but one face: the same wrung brow, the
same wistful eyes, the same lips bitten in anguish. I knew the face.
_We all know it_.

"His own Son! O devil rather than God!" I fell on my knees in the
gushing water and covered my eyes.

"Stand up, listen and look!" said Harry's voice.

"What can I see? He hides behind that curtain."

"And the curtain?"

"It shakes continually."

"_That is with His sobs_. Listen! What of the water?"

"It runs from the throne and about the floor. It washes off the blood."

"That water is His tears. It flows hence down the hill, and washes all
the shores of earth."

Then as I s