Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/93

Rh The cloudless sky had turned from deepest blue to palest green, and the dying sun had, as it were, spilt its blood across the west, leaving a gold-red haze behind the waving palm trees that stood against the skies in dark defined relief, showing the pattern of each leaf. Here and there a star opened a twinkling eye and glimmered faintly, and the roads that looked so white in the midday sun grew greyer every moment. Olive and cypress trees, leafless vineyards, houses and walls and hills were every moment shrouded more and more in the mantle of darkness that was falling silently over the earth. Every now and then a bat, whirring out from a neighbouring tree, or a pariah dog howling outside the walls, was the only sound that broke the stillness. Along the road to Bethany a woman was hastening with cloak tightly drawn around her. At that very moment Martha was also speeding her way from Bethany to Bethsaida to beseech the Lord.

It was Mary Magdalene, who was hastening to Bethany to join her tears to those of the other Mary. No darkness frightened her, no journey seemed too long for her to hasten where she knew her Lord would be.

While she hurried along the road her thoughts turned to Jesus, as they were now ever wont to turn; the loving, penitent heart, broken with disillusions, sickened with the nausea of unholiness, emptied of all earthly love, but restored and comforted by the divine, had room for naught else now but the Nazarene. Every now and then a strange misgiving overcame her. How was it that Jesus had allowed Lazarus, whom He so loved, to die? Was it