The dawn was brighter now, red and hazy with curious faint gleams of radiance from the sun, that as yet was not risen. All the light there was fell on the crowd of Jerusalem.
One ray white and pure fell upon the bowed head of the bound God.
She stood and gazed at it.
She had watched it all grow gradually into being from out the chaos of dull spaces and confused lines. This art, which could call life from the dry wastes of wood and paper, and shed perpetual light where all was darkness, was even to her an alchemy incomprehensible, immeasurable; a thing not to be criticised or questioned, but adored in all its unscrutable and majestic majesty. To her it could not have been more marvelous if his hand had changed the river-sand to gold, or his touch wakened the dead cornflowers to bloom afresh as living asphodels. But now for once she forgot the sorcery of the art in the terror and the pathos of the story that it told; now for once she forgot, in the creation, its creator.
All she saw was the face of the Christ,—the pale bent face, in whose eyes there was a patience so perfect, a pity so infinite, a reproach that had no wrath, a scorn that had no cruelty.
She had hated the Christ on the cross, because he was the God of the people she hated, and in whose name they reviled her. But this Christ moved her strangely—there, in the light, alone; betrayed and forsaken while the crowd rushed on, lauding Barabbas.
Ignorant though she was, the profound meanings of the parable penetrated her with their ironies and with their woe—the parable of the genius rejected and the thief exalted.
She trembled and was silent; and in her eyes sudden tears swam.
"They have talked of their God—often—so often," she muttered. "But I never knew till now what they meant."
Arslàn turned and looked at her. He had not known that she was there.