"Yes," she replied, with unruffled sweetness. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those that bring good tidings!" And her eyes shone in exultation.
"They were messengers of evil," I said—"whisperers of untruth. Life is for love and joy."
"Ah, no!" she urged tremulously. "Surely you know the world—how full it is of suffering and sin." And as with an unconscious movement, she threw back her splendid furs, revealing the weird shroud. "Ah, what ecstasy to think that the divine day will come, ere I am old, when, as it is written in the twenty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, 'He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory: and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of His people shall He take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken.'"
Her own eyes were full of tears, which I yearned to kiss away.
"But your own life meantime?" I said softly.
"My life—does it not already take on the glory of God as this mountain the coming day?"
She seemed indeed akin to the cold white peak as I had seen it flushed with sunrise. My passion seemed suddenly prosaic and selfish. I was lifted up into the higher love that worships and abnegates.
"God bless you!" I said, and turning away with misty vision, saw, creeping off, the three dark fanatical figures.
VIII
Half a century later I was startled to find the name of Zloczszol in a headline of the Sunday edition of my American paper.