But six years ago. . .! Quixtus buried his face in his hands and shuddered. Had the man been false to every one—even to the wife of the friend he had betrayed?
Suddenly he rose with a great cry and a passionate gesture of both arms.
“I am lost! I am lost! I am floundering in quicksands. The meaning of the earth has gone from me. I’m in a land of grotesques—shapes that mop and mow at me and have no reality. The things they do the human brain can’t conceive. They have been driving me mad, mad!” he cried, beating his head with his knuckles, “and yet I am sane now. Did you ever know what it was to be so sane that your soul was tortured with sanity? Oh, my God!”
He walked about the room quivering from the outburst. Clementina regarded him with amazed interest. This was a new, undreamed of Quixtus, a human creature that had passed through torment.
“Tell me what is on your mind,” she said quietly. “It might ease it.”
“No,” said he, halting before her. “Not to my dying day. There are things one must keep within oneself till they eat away one’s vitals. I wish I had never come here.”
“You came here on an errand of mercy, and as far as you were concerned you performed it.”
“I came here with hate in my heart, I tell you. I came here on an errand of evil. And outside the door of his room my purpose failed me—and I sent him my love. And then I went in and saw him—dead.”
“And you forgave him,” said Clementina.
“No; I prayed that God would.”