"
"Dear heart!" she answered, and pressed his hands with all her
strength.
"They will hurt you but little," she said; "and you are going
through this pain, you are going through it, dear lover, for
ME . . . . Dear, if a woman's heart and life can do it, I
will repay you. My dearest one, my dearest with the tender voice,
I will repay."
He was drenched in pity for himself and her.
He held her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers and
looked on her sweet face for the last time. "Good-bye!" he
whispered to that dear sight, "good-bye!"
And then in silence he turned away from her.
She could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something in
the rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping.
He walked away.
He had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows
were beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until the
hour of his sacrifice should come, but as he walked he lifted up
his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden
armour, marching down the steeps . . . .
It seemed to him that before this splendour he and this blind
world in the valley, and his love and all, were no more than a pit
of sin.
He did not turn aside as he had meant to do, but went on and
passed through the wall of the circumference and out upon the
rocks, and his eyes were always upon the sunlit ice and snow.
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