"Woe is me! Correntian! dark, avenging angel! must you follow me wherever I go?" groaned the tormented soul. "Whither may I fly from you; and where can I save you, my poor eyes, from the two-edged sword that he has planted in my heart there to gnaw in fury against myself."
Then again he heard the threatening voice, "Coward, what do you fear? And what is it after all? You destroy a mirror in which hell focuses its rays--you destroy a transparent vessel, and empty out once for all the fount of those tears which you then need never again shed. One stroke--and it is done; a stroke so slight that a child might drive it home, a hail-stone, a thorn--and you tremble at that?"
Nay, nay, it was not the stroke of the knife, not the flow of blood that he quaked at. In losing his eyes, he must extinguish the sun, moon, and stars, put out all light with this lovely world that is as the very presentment of God--plunge himself into nothingness, an outcast in the midst of the joys of all creation.
The sweat poured down his face, his knees failed him; he sank down in the tall, reedy grass, sobbing as he cooled his burning face in the moist, dewy earth.