with|his back against a tall, sheltering boulder. It
was dark just here, dark and quiet and immense —
yes, and something else too which he could not
fathom. Where was he? Perhaps he also was dead
like those men who had lain so amazingly still with
their arms and legs sprawled out in the moonlight.
'Master, the words !*
'Hush, Anfos, speak softly. It is time that you
slept, it is growing late. Sleep, Anfos, for sleep is a
comforting thing.'
'Master, oh, master —the words! the words!'
'But "are not you also a dead man, Anfos? I seem
to remember that Anfos is dead, that he died to
prevent us killing our God. Have we killed our God?
Can God be killed, Anfos?3
Then it came; the illimitable Presence that yet
appeared so strangely familiar. The Kingdom, the
Power, the Shadowless Glory that yet stooped beneath
the burdens^ of those who were spent, that yet toiled
with the patience of those who toiled, that yet humbled
Itself to the needs of the humble. The Timeless, the
All-Wisdom; the Judge yet the judged; the Consoler
who yet desired consolation.
Christophe dragged himself stiffly onto his knees.
His body was shaken and torn by fear, but his spirit
gazed up into pale, bright eyes that it seemed to have
seen before, to remember.
'Who are you?' he gasped. And even as he questioned
he envisaged the pitiful limitations of the mind, for
ever struggling with doubt, for ever seeking to chain
faith to reason — the timid, self-conscious, mistrustfiil
mind. . . .
'I am the Indestructible Compassion.5
Then suddenly all the travail of creation, all the
anguish .and doubt, all the fear and blindness being
drawn into one vast, courageous heart: 'I am the
Indestructible Compassion.9
485