I can tell no man what his eyes said.  I understood, I cannot tell how; and with trembling all my limbs seemed to drop out of joint and my face grow moist with terror.  I could not speak any more than he, but with my lips shaped, How?  The awful thought made a tremor in the very air around.  He shook his head slowly as he looked at me, his eyes, all circled with deep lines, looking out of caves of anguish and anxiety; and then I remembered how he had said, and I had scoffed at him, that the way he sought was one he did not know.  I had dropped his hands in my fear; and yet to leave him seemed dragging the heart out of my breast, for none but he had spoken to me like a brother, had taken my hand and thanked me.  I looked out across the plain, and the roads seemed tranquil and still.  There was a coolness in the air.  It looked like evening, as if somewhere in those far distances there might be a place where a weary soul might rest; and I looked behind me, and thought what I had suffered, and remembered the lazar-house and the voices that cried and the hands that beat against the door, and also the horrible quiet of the room in which I lived, and the eyes which looked in at me and turned my gaze upon myself.  Then I rushed after him, for he had turned to go on upon his way, and caught at his clothes, crying, ‘Behold me, behold me!  I will go too!’

He reached me his hand and went on without a word; and I with terror crept after him, treading in his steps, following like his shadow.  What it was to walk with another, and follow, and be at one, is more than I can tell; but likewise my heart failed me for fear, for dread of what we might encounter, and of hearing that name or entering that presence which was more terrible than all torture.  I wondered how it could be that one should willingly face that which racked the soul, and how he had learned that it was possible, and where he had heard of the way.  And as we went on I said no word, for he began to seem to me a being of another kind, a figure full of awe; and I followed as one might follow a ghost.  Where would he go?  Were we not fixed here forever, where our lot had been cast?  And there were still many other great cities where there might be much to see, and something to distract the mind, and where it might be more possible to live than it had proved in the other places.  There might be no tyrants there, nor cruelty, nor horrible noises, nor dreadful silence.  Towards the right hand, across the plain, there seemed to rise out of the gray distance a cluster of towers and roofs like another habitable place; and who could tell that something better might not be there?  Surely everything could not turn to torture and misery.  I dragged on behind him, with all these thoughts hurrying through my mind.  He was going—­I dare to say it now, though I did not dare then—­to seek out a way to God; to try, if it was possible, to find the road that led back,—­that road which had been open