He paused and sighed,--then continued sorrowfully--"There is, there must be something wrong in the mechanism of life,--some little hitch that stops the even wheels,--some curious perpetual mischance that crosses us at every turn,--but I doubt not all is for the best, and will prove most truly so hereafter!"
"Hereafter!" echoes Theos bitterly ... "Thinkest thou that even God, repenting of the evil He hath done, will ever be able to compensate us by any future bliss, for all the needless anguish of the Present?"
Zuriel looked at him with a strange, almost spectral expression of mingled pity, fear, and misgiving, but he offered no reply to this home-thrust of a question. In grave silence and with slow, majestic tread he began to lead the way along through the dismal labyrinth of black, winding arches, holding his blue lamp aloft as he went, the better to lighten the dense gloom.
Theos followed him, silent also, and wrapped in stern, and mournful musings of his own, . . musings through which faint threads of pale recollection connected with his past glimmered hazily from time to time, perplexing rather than enlightening his bewildered brain.
Presently he found himself in a low, narrow vestibule illumined by the bright yet soft radiance of a suspended Star,--and here, coming close up with his guide and observing his dress and manner more attentively, he suddenly perceived a shining SOMETHING which the old man wore hanging from his neck and which flashed against the sable hue of his garment like a wandering moonbeam.
Stopping abruptly, he examined this ornament with straining, wistful gaze, . . and slowly, very slowly, recognized its fashion of construction,--it was a plain silver Cross--nothing more. Yet at sight of the sacred, strange, yet familiar Symbol, a chord seemed to snap in his brain,--tears rushed to his tired eyes, and with a sharp cry he fell on his knees, grasping his companion's robe wildly, as a drowning man grasps at a floating spar,--while the venerable Zuriel, startled at his action, stared down upon him in evident amazement and terror.
"Rescue! ... rescue!" he cried, ... "O thou blessed among men!-- thou dost wear the Sign of Eternal Safety! ... the Sign of the Way, the Truth, and the Life! ... 'without the Way, there is no going, without the Truth there is no knowing, without the Life there is no living'! Now do I know thee for a saint in Al-Kyris,-- for thou dost openly avow thyself a follower of the Divine Faith that fools despise, and selfish souls repudiate, . . ah, I do beseech thee, thou good and holy man, absolve me of my sin of Unbelief! Teach me! ... help me! ... and I will hear thy counsels with the meekness of a listening child! ..See you, I kneel! ... I pray! ... I, even I, am humiliated to the very dust of shame! I have no pride, . . I seek no glory, ... I do entreat, even as I once rejected the blessing of the Cross, whereby I shall regain my lost love,--my despised pardon,--my vanished peace!"