"He crossed himself. Sudden tears sprang into his eyes.
"'I have called you my demon,' he cried. 'But you are my cross. Oh, brother, will you not be my crown?'
"His eyes, shadowed with tears, gazed down into mine. Bernard, in that moment, I understood all--my depression, my unreasoning despair, the fancied hatred of others, even my few good impulses, all came from him, from this living holy wraith of my evil self.
"Bernard, there, in the snow, I fell at his feet. I confessed to him. I received his absolution.
"And, as the light of the dawn grew strong upon the mountains, he, my other self, my wraith, blessed me."
There was a long silence between us. Then I said:--
"And now you know why I have changed. That day, as I went down into the land of the sunshine, I made a vow."
"Yes; to be his crown, not his cross. I soon returned to England. At first I was happy, and then one day my old evil nature came upon me like a giant. I fell again into sin, and, even as I sinned, I saw his face looking into mine, Bernard, pale, pale to the lips, and with eyes--such sad eyes of reproach! Then I thought I was not fit to live, and I tried to kill myself. They saved me, and brought me here."
"Now," he said, "I am so happy. God surely placed me here where I cannot sin. The days pass and the nights, and they are stainless. And he--he comes by night and blesses me. I live for him now, and see always the grey walls of his monastery, his face which shall, at last, be completely mine."
"Good-bye," the doctor said to me as I got into the carriage to drive back to the station. "Yes, he is perfectly happy, happier in his mania, I believe, than you or I in our sanity."
I drove away from that huge home of madness, set in the midst of lovely gardens in a smiling landscape, and I pondered those last words of the doctor's:--
And, thinking of the peace that lay on Hubert's face, I compared the so-called mad of the world with the so-called sane--and wondered.
The atmosphere of the room in which Sergius Blake was sitting seemed to him strange and cold. As he looked round it, he could imagine that a light mist invaded it stealthily, like miasma rising from some sinister marsh. There was surely a cloud about the electric light that gleamed in the ceiling, a cloud sweeping in feathery, white flakes across the faces of the pictures upon the wall. Even the familiar furniture seemed to loom out faintly, with a gaunt and grotesque aspect, from shadows less real, yet more fearful, than any living form could be.