A pair of the officials of the place passed as I spoke.  They looked at me with a threatening glance, and half paused, but then passed on.  It was I now who hurried my companion along.  I recollected him now.  He was a man who had met me in the streets of the other city when I was still ignorant, who had convulsed me with the utterance of that name which, in all this world where we were, is never named but for punishment,—­the name which I had named once more in the great hall in the midst of my torture, so that all who heard me were transfixed with that suffering too.  He had been haggard then, but he was more haggard now.  His features were sharp with continual pain; his eyes were wild with weakness and trouble, though there was a meaning in them which went to my heart.  It seemed to me that in his touch there was a certain help, though he was weak and tottered, and every moment seemed full of suffering.  Hope sprang up in my mind,—­the hope that where he was so eager to go there would be something better, a life more livable than in this place.  In every new place there is new hope.  I was not worn out of that human impulse.  I forgot the nightmare which had crushed me before,—­the horrible sense that from myself there was no escape,—­and holding fast to his arm, I hurried on with him, not heeding where.  We went aside into less frequented streets, that we might escape observation.  I seemed to myself the guide, though I was the follower.  A great faith in this man sprang up in my breast.  I was ready to go with him wherever he went, anywhere—­anywhere must be better than this.  Thus I pushed him on, holding by his arm, till we reached the very outmost limits of the city.  Here he stood still for a moment, turning upon me, and took me by the hands.

‘Friend,’ he said, ’before you were born into the pleasant earth I had come here.  I have gone all the weary round.  Listen to one who knows:  all is harder, harder, as you go on.  You are stirred to go on by the restlessness in your heart, and each new place you come to, the spirit of that place enters into you.  You are better here than you will be farther on.  You were better where you were at first, or even in the mines, than here.  Come no farther.  Stay; unless—­’ but here his voice gave way.  He looked at me with anxiety in his eyes, and said no more.

‘Then why,’ I cried, ‘do you go on?  Why do you not stay?’

He shook his head, and his eyes grew more and more soft.  ‘I am going,’ he said, and his voice shook again.  ’I am going—­to try—­the most awful and the most dangerous journey—­’ His voice died away altogether, and he only looked at me to say the rest.

‘A journey?  Where?’