At each higher turn, rose a new wall of stark stone, weather-scoured, no living thing but a few cypresses bent like cripples. Here and there by a stream were poor fields and huts, whose wild people fled like rock-rabbits. But the air was like crystal. Ahead, plunging in shadow, was the steep gorge of the Gates.
Alexandria is a splendid city, with everything a sensible man can need. I daresay I shall end my life here, without ever again going far away. But when I remember the high hills, and a pass mounting to its unknown revelation, I will not think so. Even then, knowing the evil and the danger, knowing all I had known before, even then I felt it; ecstasy, prophecy, light.
The living chick in the shell has known no other world. Through the wall comes a whiteness, but he does not know it is light. Yet he taps at the white wall, not knowing why. Lightning strikes his heart; the shell breaks open.
I thought, There goes my lord, whom I was born to follow. I have found a King.
And, I said to myself, looking after him as he walked away, I will have him, if I die for it.
He needed love as a palm tree needs water, all his life long: from armies, from cities, from conquered enemies, nothing was enough. It laid him open to false friends, as anyone will tell you. Well, for all that, no man is made a god when he is dead and can do no harm, without love. He needed love and never forgave its betrayal, which he had no understanding of. For he himself, if it was given him with a whole heart, never misused it, nor despised the giver. He took it gratefully, and felt bound by it.