Page:The centurion's story (IA centurionsstory00macf).pdf/41

 school of Epicurus to say that death is death and let it go at that, but Epicurus takes no account of the curve of the horizon. To say the ship ceases to be when it drops over the watery hill is not reasonable and to say that our friends cease to be when they drop out of sight of our childish, wondering eyes is not an answer that has commended itself to my mind for long at a time. I have held, rather, with Pythagoras that the soul that is dead soars like the Phoenix.

While I wandered thus in the bright moonlight, I came upon a man, youthful but of a solid figure. As he stood, his face uplifted where the rays of the moon fell full upon it, I saw that it was the face of an artist. There was genius in his countenance. But across it too came a look of pain and trouble and sadness not native to his features; a certain horrible shadow of suffering that had been flung upon it suddenly. I thought I recognized him for that friend of the crucified Jew who had gone with him to the house of Annas. involuntarily, I stopped without disturbing him. He stood a dozen paces from me on a broad, flat rock. His hand was on a wall, his eyes wandered off, off over the gardens, along the slopes until they rested upon that spot where the iron heels of my soldiers clanked to and fro on the rocky way and kept watch over a tomb whose solid rock was not more cold than the flesh of that which lay therein.

As he turned the light played yet more freely upon his face and I saw in those features beside the shadow of suffering the growing fire of yearning, and while I looked I thought the yearning became a hope.

I spoke to him. He started, and then returned my salutation with that strange dignity which now and then I