ad recognised himself.

He saw himself as he was then, a rough voluptuary, a thoughtless,
sentient beast who up to that time had lived a life of emptiness and of
mockery, eating and drinking and sleeping and waking again day after
day, year after year. And he saw himself as he was on that day, he one
of thousands and thousands of lookers-on gazing on the three hours'
agony of a just Man upon the Cross.

He remembered every minute of those three hours, which the hill of
imperial Rome now pictured back to him as in a dream. He had stood there
a mere unit amongst the crowd, wrapped in a dark cloak, unrecognised and
unknown, but with every nerve strained to catch the words that fell from
those dying lips. He had heard the cry of bitterness: "Lord! Lord! why
hast Thou forsaken Me?" and that of infinite love and of supreme pardon:
"Oh God, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

And above and around the sky grew darker and the air more still, and
round that dying figure alone there shone a radiance unseen by most; for
had they seen it as Taurus Antinor saw it then, then surely would they
have known, would they have understood.

And at the foot of that Cross women and men stood weeping, and
thoughtless soldiers hurled insults on their dying Lord. The lips that
had only uttered words of perfect charity thirsted for a drop of water,
and a sponge filled with gall was pressed mockingly to them.

But the arms were still extended wider and wider, so it seemed, as if in
their almighty love they would embrace all that surging humanity; all
those that suffered, those that hoped as well as those that doubted,
those who mocked Him and those who adored.

Taurus Antinor's very manhood had cried out to him then to fight the
multitude single-handed, to shake the power of Rome and defy the will of
the people, and to rush up to that one Cross, towering above the others,
to pick out with firm fingers every cruel nail, to wrap the sacred body
in soft, soothing cloths, and to kiss every wound until it closed in
health.

Even now, after all these years, the rough soldier's cheeks were burning
with the shame of impotence.

To look on that sacrifice and be unable to stop it. To look on such a
death and to continue to live on, still blind, still ununderstanding,
even though the Teacher Who had come to explain had sighed ere he died:
"It is finished!" And yet Taurus Antinor, now looking back upon his own
past self, knew that at the ti