Krishna soon after came to Paul and said:
"The sense of resurrection power I feel
Within me working to sustain my will
In striving upward as thou bidst toward God
I take it as a warrant and a proof
That Christ lives and exerts it from above.
I need no longer any testimony
Other than what I have within myself,
That He rose from the dead to die no more.
This new life that is mine I draw from Him;
It is because He lives I thus can live;
Yet gladly would I hear from Mary's lips
(Not now with curious ear, and unbelief)
Her story of the rising of the Lord.
I wake not seldom in the depths of night,
A kind of leaven of light breaks through my sleep,
As if the glory of the Lord around
Me made untimely morning for mine eyes.
Better, I trow, than our good Publius,
I shall peruse the daily prophecies
Of weather in the midnight wind and sky.
So he consents and I beforehand am
With him in waking, as I trust to be,
Let me bring tidings when my vigils next
Discern the promise of a smiling dawn
Tempered to vernal warmth. We then can meet,
As late the hint was, ere the rising sun,
To hear from Mary, while the morning breaks
And the fresh splendors of new-wakened day
Lighten the world, how Jesus over death
Triumphed, and spoiled the princedom of the grave."
"So it shall be, my Krishna," Paul said, glad
At heart that such desire, so purified
With faith, and joy, and sense of partnership
In all things by the Lord of life bestowed,
Possessed the Indian. And the days went by.
BOOK XX.
EUTHANASY.
Ruth and Mary Magdalené waking very early talk with one another having not yet risen, and Mary discloses a placid premonition that she has of her own imminent death. They thus engaged, a signal sound from without is heard in notes from Stephen on his pipe. The summons is for the meeting proposed to hear Mary's story of the resurrection.
The company repair to a hilltop of easy access and goodly prospect, where after a matin prayer from Paul Mary tells her story. She has scarcely ended, when she gently sinks in death. Paul on occasion of this speaks comfortingly, not without tears of personal sorrow for Mary's loss, of the resurrection awaiting the dead in Christ.
Meantime Simon the sorcerer having observed from a distance the meeting of the Christians puts his own sinister interpretation on what occurred, which, so interpreted, he reports, to Paul's disadvantage, to Felix and Drusilla, with suggestion of use that may be made of it in evidence against the apostle at Rome.