than she. And my heart sang a song within me in praise of the love
of woman, but I thought only of the love of my woman to me, whom the
fires of hell could not hold back from him who was worthy of her
love; and my heart sent the song up to my lips; but, as the first
word arose, sure itself a red bubble from the pit of glowing hell,
the black crust burst up between us, and a great hillock of
seething, slow-spouting, slow-falling, mad red fire arose. For a
moment or two the molten mound bubbled and wallowed, then sank--and
I saw not my wife. Headlong I plunged into the fiery pool at my
feet, and the clinging torture hurt me not, and I caught her in my
arms, and rose to the surface, and crept forth, and shook the fire
from mine eyes, and lo! I held to my bosom but as the fragment of a
cinder of the furnace. And I laughed aloud in my madness, and the
devils below heard me, and laughed yet again. O Age! O Decay! I
cried, see how I triumph over thee: what canst thou do to this? And
I flung the cinder from me into the pool, and plunged again into the
grinning fire. But it cast me out seven times, and the seventh time
I turned from it, and rushed out of the valley of burning, and threw
myself on the mountain-side in the moonlight, and awoke mad.

"'And what I had then said in despair, I said yet again in
thankfulness. O Age! O Decay! I cried, what canst thou now do to
destroy the image of her which I bear nested in my heart of hearts?
That at least is safe, I thank God. And from that hour I never more
believed that I should die when at length my body dropped from me.
If the thought came, it came as a fear, and not as a thing
concerning which a man may say I would or I would not. For a mighty
hope had arisen within me that yet I should stand forgiven in the
eyes of him that was crucified, and that in token of his forgiveness
he would grant me to look again, but in peace, upon the face of her