You with drawn sword in hand, and facing you,
also with drawn sword, rage and despair on his dark face, a stately,
foreign-looking man, whom mine eyes have never seen, but whom I should
know again midst a million, a man who, I think, was doomed to fill the
grave.
"Lastly, standing on a little mound near to the bank of the swirling
river, where jagged sheets of ice ground against each other like the
teeth of the wicked in hell, strangely capped and clad in black, his
arms crossed upon his breast and a light smile in his cold eyes, he who
was called Murgh in Cathay, he who named himself Gateway of the Gods!
"For a moment I saw, then all was gone, and I found myself--I know not
why--walking toward the mighty arch whereon sat the iron dragons. In its
shadow I turned and looked back. There at the head of the pool the man
was seated in his chair, and to right and to left of him came the black
doves and the white doves in countless multitudes, all the thousands
of them that had been stayed in their flight pouring down upon him at
once--or so I thought. They wheeled about his head, they hid his face
from me, and I--I departed into the shadow of the arch, and I saw him
and them no more."
CHAPTER IV
THE PENANCE
The tale was done, and these two stood staring at one another from each
side of the glowing hearth, whose red light illumined their faces.
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