though He consisted of mist floating over
a lake, and penetrated by the light of the setting moon, and His soft
speech began to sound tenderly, somewhere far, far away. And gazing at
the wavering phantom, and drinking in the tender melody of the distant
dream-like words, Judas gathered his whole soul into his iron fingers,
and in its vast darkness silently began building up some colossal
scheme. Slowly, in the profound darkness, he kept lifting up masses,
like mountains, and quite easily heaping them one on another: and again
he would lift up and again heap them up; and something grew in the
darkness, spread noiselessly and burst its bounds. His head felt like a
dome, in the impenetrable darkness of which the colossal thing continued
to grow, and some one, working on in silence, kept lifting up masses
like mountains, and piling them one on another and again lifting up, and
so on and on... whilst somewhere in the distance the phantom-like words
tenderly sounded.

Thus he stood blocking the doorway, huge and black, while Jesus went on
talking, and the strong, intermittent breathing of Peter repeated His
words aloud. But on a sudden Jesus broke off an unfinished sentence, and
Peter, as though waking from sleep, cried out exultingly--

"Lord! to Thee are known the words of eternal life!"

But Jesus held His peace, and kept gazing fixedly in one direction. And
when they followed His gaze they perceived in the doorway the petrified
Judas with gaping mouth and fixed eyes. And, not understanding what
was the matter, they laughed. But Matthew, who was learned in the
Scriptures, touched Judas on the shoulder, and said in the words of
Solomon--

"'He that looketh kindly shall be forgiven; but he that is met within
the gates will impede others.'"

Judas was silent for a while, and then fretfully and everything about
him, his eyes, hands and feet, seemed to start in different directions,
as those of an animal which suddenly perceives the eye of man upon him.
Jesus went straight to Judas, as though words trembled on His lips, but
passed by him through the open, and now unoccupied, door.

In the middle of the night the restless Thomas came to Judas' bed, and
sitting down on his heels, asked--

"Are you weeping, Judas?"

"No! Go away, Thomas."

"Why do you groan, and grind your teeth? Are you ill?"

Judas was silent for a while, and then fretfully there fell from his
lips distressful words, fraught with grief and anger--