'Be ready!' Then it must be this evening. Was he not to go on the morrow? Yes; of that point I was certain. I had seen the date of his vessel's departure advertised. Oh! _I_ would be ready. But could that longed-for meeting really be achieved? The time was so short, the schemers seemed so watchful, so active, so hostile. The way of access appeared strait as a gully, deep as a chasm; Apollyon straddled across it, breathing flames. Could my Greatheart overcome? Could my guide reach me?
Who might tell? Yet I began to take some courage, some comfort. It seemed to me that I felt a pulse of his heart beating yet true to the whole throb of mine.
I waited my champion. Apollyon came trailing his hell behind him. I think if eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature despair. I think that on a certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades, stood, shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur the height and compass of his promise--spoke thus, then towering, became a star, and vanished into his own heaven. His legacy was suspense--a worse born than despair.
All that evening I waited, trusting in the dove-sent olive leaf, yet in the midst of my trust terribly fearing. My fear pressed heavy. Cold and peculiar, I knew it for the partner of a rarely-belied presentiment. The first hours seemed long and slow; in spirit I clung to the flying skirts of the last. They passed like drift cloud--like the rack scudding before a storm.
Prayers were over; it was bed-time; my co-inmates were all retired. I still remained in the gloomy first _classe_, forgetting, or at least disregarding, rules I had never forgotten or disregarded before.
How long I paced that _classe_, I cannot tell; I must have been afoot many hours. Mechanically had I moved aside benches and desks, and had made for myself a path down its length. There I walked, and there, when certain that the whole household were abed and quite out of hearing, there I at last wept. Reliant on night, confiding in solitude, I kept my tears sealed, my sobs chained, no longer. They heaved my heart; they tore their way. In this house, what grief could be sacred!