thus the master of my flesh and superior to its claims and
remonstrances. When I found under me a particularly sharp, but not too
sharp, rock-projection, I ground my body upon the point of it, rowelled
my flesh in a very ecstasy of mastery and of purification.

It was a stagnant day of heat. Not a breath of air moved over the river
valley on which I sometimes gazed. Hundreds of feet beneath me the wide
river ran sluggishly. The farther shore was flat and sandy and stretched
away to the horizon. Above the water were scattered clumps of
palm-trees.

On my side, eaten into a curve by the river, were lofty, crumbling
cliffs. Farther along the curve, in plain view from my eyrie, carved out
of the living rock, were four colossal figures. It was the stature of a
man to their ankle joints. The four colossi sat, with hands resting on
knees, with arms crumbled quite away, and gazed out upon the river. At
least three of them so gazed. Of the fourth all that remained were the
lower limbs to the knees and the huge hands resting on the knees. At the
feet of this one, ridiculously small, crouched a sphinx; yet this sphinx
was taller than I.

I looked upon these carven images with contempt, and spat as I looked. I
knew not what they were, whether forgotten gods or unremembered kings.
But to me they were representative of the vanity of earth-men and earth-
aspirations.

And over all this curve of river and sweep of water and wide sands beyond
arched a sky of aching brass unflecked by the tiniest cloud.

The hours passed while I roasted in the sun. Often, for quite decent
intervals, I forgot my heat and pain in dreams and visions and in
memories. All this I knew--crumbling colossi and river and sand and sun
and brazen sky--was to pass away in the twinkling of an eye. At any
moment the trumps of the archangels might sound, the stars fall out of
the sky, the heavens roll up as a scroll, and the Lord God of all come
with his hosts for the final judgment.

Ah, I knew it so profoundly that I was ready for such sublime event. That
was why I was here in rags and filth and wretchedness. I was meek and
lowly, and I despised the frail needs and passions of the flesh. And I
thought with contempt, and with a certain satisfaction, of the far cities
of the plain I had known, all unheeding, in their pomp and lust, of the
last day so near at hand. Well, they would see soon enough, but too late
for them. And I should see. But