“Assuredly,” he said to himself, “time has no reality.  It is a simple illusion of our minds.  Then, if it does not exist, how can it bring death to me?  Does that mean that I shall live for ever?  No, but I conclude therefrom that my death is, always has been, as it always will be.  I do not feel it yet, but it is in me, and I ought not to fear it, for it would be folly to dread the coming of that which has arrived.  It exists, like the last page of a book I read and have not finished.”

This argument occupied him all the rest of the way, but without making him more cheerful; and his mind was filled with dismal thoughts when he arrived at the door of his house and heard the merry laughter of Crobyle and Myrtale, who were playing at tennis whilst they were waiting for him.

Paphnutius and Thais left the city by the Gate of the Moon, and followed the coast.

“Woman,” said the monk, “all that great blue sea could not wash away thy pollutions.”

He spoke with scorn and anger.

“More filthy than a bitch or a sow, thou hast prostituted to pagans and infidels a body which the Eternal had intended for a tabernacle, and thy impurities are such that, now that thou knowest the truth, thou canst not unite thy lips or join thy hands without a horror of thyself rising in thy heart.”

She followed him meekly, over stony roads, under a burning sun.  Her knees ached from fatigue, and her throat was parched with thirst.  But, far from feeling any of the pity which softens the hearts of the profane, Paphnutius rejoiced at these propitiatory sufferings of the flesh which had so sinned.  So infuriated was he with holy zeal that he would have liked to cut with rods the body that had preserved its beauty as a shining witness to its infamy.  His meditations augmented his pious fury, and remembering that Thais had received Nicias in her bed, that idea seemed so horrible to him that his blood all flowed back to his heart, and his breast felt ready to burst.  His curses were stifled in his throat, and he could only grind his teeth.  He sprang forward and stood before her, pale, terrible, and filled with the Spirit of God—­looked into her very soul, and then spat in her face.

She calmly wiped her face and continued to walk on.  He followed, glaring at her in pious anger, as if she had been hell itself.  He was thinking how he could avenge Christ in order that Christ should not avenge Himself, when he saw a drop of blood that had dripped from the foot of Thais on the sand.  Then a hitherto unknown influence entered his opened heart, sobs rose to his lips, he wept, he ran and knelt before her, called her his sister, and kissed her bleeding feet.  He murmured a hundred times, “My sister, my sister, my mother, O most holy!”

He prayed—­

“Angels of heaven, receive carefully this drop of blood, and bear it before the throne of the Lord.  And may a miraculous anemone blossom on the sand sprinkled with the blood of Thais, that those who see the flower may recover purity of heart and feeling.  O holy, holy, most holy Thais!”