He fled into the forest. He ran till he could no longer hear the shouting. A narrow path brought him to the glade grown with high grass and surrounded with impenetrable pines, where he had once prayed to the “Fertile Mother Earth.”
The evening glow was dying away on the tree tops. Golden cloudlets floated over the sky. The thicket exhaled a fresh resinous perfume. The stillness was intense.
He threw himself on the ground, buried his head in the grass, and again, as on that day near the Round Lake, he kissed the earth and prayed to her as if he knew that she alone could save him from this fiery delirium of the Red Death:—
Wondrous Queen, Mother of God,
Earth, thou fertile Mother of all!...
Suddenly he felt a hand laid on his shoulder; he turned round and saw it was Sophia.
She was bending over him and regarding him silently, intently. He too remained silent, and looked up at her. The young girl’s face under the black shawl stood out against the gold and azure sky like the icon of a saint upon the golden background. Pale, with lips red and fresh, like a newly opened flower, with innocent eyes, deep as the lake, her face was so beautiful that his heart stopped beating as in sudden fright.
“So you are here, brother!” she said at last. “And Cornelius searching for you everywhere cannot think whither you have disappeared. Come up! Let us go. Be quick!”
She was excited, joyous, as if great happiness had befallen her.
“No, Sophia,” he said in a calm firm voice, “I will not return there again. Really, I have had enough of it; I have seen and heard sufficient. I shall leave the monastery for good.”