one who searches in a dark place. Then, shaking her
head, she let it fall to her breast. 'Is there any sorrow like my
sorrow?' says she to herself, as though he had not been there.

Richard grew stern. 'So asked in His agony the Son of high God,' he
reproved her. 'If you dare ask Him that in His own words your sorrow
must be deep.'

She said, 'It is most deep.'

'But His,' said Richard, 'was bitter shame.' She said, 'And mine is
bitter.'

'But His was undeserved.' He spoke scorn; so then she lifted up her
head, and with eyes most piteous searched his face. 'But mine, Richard,'
she said, 'but mine is deserved.'

'The hearing is pertinent,' said Richard. 'As a son and man affianced it
touches me pretty close.'

Out of the hot and desperate struggle for breath, sounds came from her,
but no words. But she ran forward blindly, and kneeling, caught him by
the knees; he could not but find pity in his heart for the witless poor
wretch, who seemed to be fighting, not with regret nor for need of his
pity, but with some maggot in the brain which drove her deeper into the
fiery centre of the storm. Richard did what he could. A religious man
himself, he pointed her to the Christ on the wall; but she waved it out
of sight, shook her wild hair back, and clung to him still, asking some
unguessed mercy with her eyes and sobbing breath. 'God help this
tormented soul, for I cannot,' he prayed; and said aloud, 'I will call
your women; let me go.' So he tried to undo her hands, but she clenched
her teeth together and held on with frenzy, whining, grunting, like some
pounded animal. Dumbly they strove together for a little panting space
of time.

'Ah, but you shall let me go,' he said then, much distressed, and
forcibly unknotted her mad hands. She fell back upon her heels, and
looked up at him. Such hopeless, grinning misery he had never seen on a
face before. He was certain now that she was out of her wits.

Yet once again she brushed her hands over her face, as he had seen her
do before, like one who sweeps gossamers away on autumn mornings; and
though she was all in a shiver and shake with the fever she had, she
found her voice at last. 'Ah, thanks! Ah, my thanks, O Christ my
Saviour!' she sighed. 'O sweet Saviour Christ, now I will tell him all
the truth.'

If he had listened to her then it had been well for him. But he did not.
The struggle had fretted him likewise; if she was mad he was maddened.
He got angry where he sho