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Thomas Wingfold, Curate V3 by George MacDonald
page 59 of 201 (29%)
his mouth and spake to his mother and the disciple who stood by her,
but truly I know not what he said, for as his eyes turned from them,
they looked upon me, and my heart died within me. He said nought,
but his eyes had that in them that would have slain me with sorrow,
had not death, although I knew it not, already shrunk from my
presence, daring no more come nigh such a malefactor.--Oh Death, how
gladly would I build thee a temple, set thee in a lofty place, and
worship thee with the sacrifice of vultures on a fire of dead men's
bones, wouldst thou but hear my cry!--But I rave again in my folly!
God forgive me. All the days of my appointed time will I wait until
my change come.--With that look--a well of everlasting tears in my
throbbing brain--my feet were unrooted, and I fled.'"

Here the reader paused again, and turned over many leaves.

"'And ever as I passed at night through the lands, when I came to a
cross by the wayside, thereon would I climb, and, winding my arms
about its arms and my feet about its stem, would there hang in the
darkness or the moon, in rain or hail, in wind or snow or frost,
until my sinews gave way, and my body dropped, and I knew no more
until I found myself lying at its foot in the morning. For, ever in
such case, I lay without sense until again the sun shone upon me.

"'... And if ever the memory of that look passed from me, then,
straightway I began to long for death, and so longed until the
memory and the power of the look came again, and with the sorrow in
my soul came the patience to live. And truly, although I speak of
forgetting and remembering, such motions of my spirit in me were not
as those of another man; in me they are not measured by the scale of
men's lives; they are not of years, but of centuries; for the
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