-1-

She could not believe that he had died. She had sat beside the narrow window, not knowing how long her sitting had lasted; yet she felt that an age had passed over her in this state, and that in the folds of her breast lay a mute sorrow that flared up time and again, so that she wished her eye might overflow with tears, or an eyelid might doze, or her mind find rest — but no: she was weighed down with the burden, staggering under grief, as though a millstone had been hung about her neck and she had been cast into the deep, the waves about her high and troubled, the wind raging and wild, and the darkness pitch-black and dreadful, engulf-ing everything.

But she was watching for the morning, and the night was slipping away little by little; and when moments passed and the semblance of a cross loomed on the distant hill, her heart throbbed and stirred, and she began to feel her frail shoulder, where, two nights before, that lifeless body had rested; and she began to look about her, distracted of mind, searching for the flask of perfume; and when she found it among the folds of her dress, she clasped it to her breast as a mother clasps her precious only son, and left the common room, which seemed a desolate wilderness not to be endured.

*

-2-

The world was still in a light dusk; a thin veil of mist covered the face of the earth, and at the edge of the sky the morning star shone. It seemed to her, as she

made her way along the winding path, that this star accompanied her and kept pace with her — pressing on when she pressed on, slowing when she slowed, its light fading and straying when her own soul faded and strayed — until it was as if this pale beam floundering in the darkness were this bewildered soul stum-bling through deprivation, a soul that had slumbered a moment of time, then risen to find about it nothing but mocking eyes, scoffing lips, and hands shaking with anger and hatred — she who before had been the whisper of eyes, the talk of lips, the plaything of hands; before whom heads had bowed from Rome and Jerusalem, and crystal cups had sparkled with the oldest of wines, and beds of ostrich plumes had sighed beneath her, while the world around her rang with revelry, frolic, and wantonness!...

She walked on, intending noth-ing; then a breath of mist blew from behind the knolls and hills, and she felt, as in a dream, her heart being wrung and crushed within her ribs — as though faces and turbans surrounded her, as though a company of elders had gathered round her, seized her, torn her dress, and dragged her by her hair, until, when they reached the courtyard of the temple where Jesus sat,

their chief flung her down before him, saying:

"This woman was taken in an abomination... shall we stone her...?!"

And another said:

"Thus did our lord Moses com-mand us. What do you say...?!"

Jesus, his head bare, was tracing with his finger upon the ground, while the crowd awaited the sen-tence of stoning, and she veiled her face with her palms and her long hair, as though warding off those mighty hands that would rain stones upon her from every side. But Jesus raised his head — eyelids serene in their depths, a brow of spacious expanse, a countenance like the morning, radiant in its splendor. He looked at her, and looked long; then he looked at them, probing the hidden places of their souls, and cried out at them, defying what stirred in their minds:

"Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone at her...."

And he bowed his head and returned to tracing with his finger upon the ground; and the faces scowled, the turbans shook, the beards quivered — then they vanished in an abject muttering behind the wall. And Mary could not believe what had happened; she wished he would