Now for the first time he began to notice the words that showed dimly through the stain, began to read them, to puzzle them out, as if they were new to him:—­

   “But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them
    which hate you,

   “Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use
    you.

   “And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek, offer also the
    other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy
    coat also.

   “Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away
    thy goods ask them not again.

   “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them
    likewise.”

Again and again he read them.  They were illumined with a strangely terrible meaning by the blood of her he had loved and sworn to keep himself clean for.

He could no longer fight off the truth.  It was facing him now in all its nakedness, monstrous to obscenity, demanding its due measure from his own soul’s blood.  He aroused himself, shivering, and looked out into the room where the shadows lay heavy, and from whence came the breathing of the sleepers.  He picked up the now sputtering candle, set in its hole bored in a block of wood, and held it up for a last look at the little woman-child.  He was full of an agony of wonder as he gazed, of piteous questioning why this should be as it was.  The child stirred and flung one arm over her eyes as if to hide the light.  He put out the candle and set it down.  Then stooping over, he kissed the pillow beside the child’s head and stepped lightly to the door.  He had come to the end of his subterfuges—­he could no longer delay his punishment.

Outside the moon was shining, and his horse moved about restlessly.  He put on the saddle and rode off to the south, galloping rapidly after he reached the highway.  Off there was a kindly desert where a man could take in peace such punishment as his body could bear and his soul decree; and where that soul could then pass on in decent privacy to be judged by its Maker.

CHAPTER XXII.

The Picture in the Sky

If something of the peace of the night-silence came to him as he rode, he counted it only the peace of surrender and despair.  He knew now that he had been cheated of all his great long-nursed hopes of some superior exaltation.  Nor this only; for he had sinned unforgivably and incurred perdition.  He who had fasted, prayed, and endured, waiting for his Witness, for the spreading of the heavens and the glory of the open vision, had overreached himself and was cast down.

When at last he slowed his horse to a walk, it was the spring of the day.  The moon had gone, and over on his left a soft grayness began to show above the line of the hills.  The light grew until it glowed with the fire of opals; through the tree-tops ran little stirs of wakefulness, and all about him were faint, furtive rustlings and whispers of the new day.  Then in this glorified dusk of the dawn a squirrel loosed his bark of alarm, a crested jay screamed in answer, and he knew his hour of atonement was come.