The words of the saint to the thief were not more merciful, not more noble, than the words with which he purchased, at the sacrifice of his own life, the redemption of his brother's. The other looked at him with a look that was half of terror—terror at the magnitude of this ransom that was given to save him from the bondage of evil.
“My God! You cannot mean it! And you——”
“I shall lead the life fittest for me. I am content in it. It is enough.”
The answer was very calm, but it choked him in its utterance. Before his memory rose one fair, proud face. “Content!” Ah, Heaven! It was the only lie that had ever passed his lips.
His hand lay still upon his brother's shoulder, leaning more heavily there, in the silence that brooded over the hushed plains.
“Let us part now, and forever. Leave Algeria at once. That is all I ask.”
Then, without another word that could add reproach or seek for gratitude, he turned and went away over the great, dim level of the African waste, while the man whom he had saved sat as in stupor; gazing at the brown shadows, and the sleeping herds, and the falling stars that ran across the sky, and doubting whether the voice he had head and the face upon which he had looked were not the visions of a waking dream.