And it was to justify, to challenge, to maintain a right, that I was there.  I was there to wrestle, if needs be, with the Angel of that Place, to vanquish him or to compel him to reveal himself.  I had not been summoned; I had thrust myself there unbidden.  There was a moment in which I noticed that my writing-table was a little more than ordinarily removed from me, but very little, not more than if I had been looking over the shoulder of another writer at it; and I saw my chapter heading.  At the sight of it something of the egotism that had prompted me to write it stirred in me again; everywhere was Andriaovsky’s calm face, priest and Angel himself; and I became conscious that I was trying to write a phrase.  I also became conscious that I was being pitifully warned not to do so...

Suddenly my whole being was flooded with a frightful pang of pain.

It was not local.  It was no more to be located than the other immanences of which I have spoken.  It was Pain, pure, essential, dissociated; and with the coming of it that fair Place had grown suddenly horrible and black.

And I knew that the shock came of my own resistance, and that it would cease to afflict me the moment I ceased to resist.

I did cease.  Instantly the pain passed.  But as when a knife is plucked from a wound, so only with its passing did I shriek aloud....

For I know not how many minutes I sat in stupefaction.  Then, as with earthly pains, that are assuaged with the passing of accidental time, the memory of it softened a little.  Blunderingly and only half consciously, I cast about to collect my dispersed force.

For—­already I was conscious of it—­there still remained one claim that even in thought I had not advanced.  I would, were I permitted, still write that “Life,” but, since it was decreed so, I would no longer urge that in writing it I justified myself.  So I might but write it, I would embrace my own portion, the portion of doom; yea, though it should be a pressing of the searing-iron to my lips, I would embrace it; my name should not appear.  For the mere sake of the man I had loved I would write it, in self-scorn and abasement, humbly craving not to be denied....

"Oh, let me but do for Love of you what a sinful man can!" I groaned....

A moment later I had again striven to do so.  So do we all, when we think that out of a poor human Love we can alter the Laws by which our state exists.  And with such a hideous anguish as was again mine are we visited....

And I knew now what that anguish was.  It was the twining of body from spirit that is called the bitterness of Death; for not all of the body are the pangs of that severance.  With that terrible sword of impersonal Pain the God of Peace makes sorrowful war that Peace may come again.  With its flame He ringed the bastions of Heaven when Satan made assault.  Only on the Gorgon-image of that Pain in the shield may weak man look; and its blaze and ire had permeated with deadly nearness the “everywhere” where I was...