“It was a fiery day of late June. Africa was bathed in a glare of light that hurt the eyes. I went into my cell and put on a pair of blue glasses and my wide straw hat, the hat in which I formerly used to work in the fields. When I came out my guest was standing on the garden path. He was swinging a stick in one hand. The other hand, which hung down by his side, was twitching nervously. In the glitter of the sun his face looked ghastly. In his eyes there seemed to be terrors watching without hope.
“‘You are ready?’ he said. ‘Let us go.’
“We set off, walking quickly.
“‘Movement—pace—sometimes that does a little good,’ he said. ‘If one can exhaust the body the mind sometimes lies almost still for a moment. If it would only lie still for ever.’
“I said nothing. I could say nothing. For my fever was surely as his fever.
“‘Where are we going?’ he asked when we reached the little house of the keeper of the gate by the cemetery.
“‘We cannot walk in the sun,’ I answered. ‘Let us go into the eucalyptus woods.’
“The first Trappists had planted forests of eucalyptus to keep off the fever that sometimes comes in the African summer. We made our way along a tract of open land and came into a deep wood. Here we began to walk more slowly. The wood was empty of men. The hot silence was profound. He took off his white helmet and walked on, carrying it in his hand. Not till we were far in the forest did he speak. Then he said, ‘Father, I cannot struggle on much longer.’
“He spoke abruptly, in a hard voice.
“‘You must try to gain courage,’ I said.