Page:Vorse--The ninth man.djvu/18

 and know the meaning of the smoking, sick, red smell of it.

Among them all there were those who walked insolently as though to dare Death, but there were none who remained unconscious of his shadow. As my lady bade me look, I saw one who walked outside the circle of this walking fear like a happy child in a field of lilies. This young man belonged, it seemed by his habit, to some religious order. To us, at the window above this restless moving people, driven hither and thither in their cold suspense, he seemed like a dweller from some other world who walked outside the circle of our concern. He had a rough-hewn and clownish face, and his eyes had the gentle and brutish gaze of the lads who tend goats on the mountain, but the high serenity that had made him solitary in a crowd shone from them.

"Bring him to me," said my lady, "for I will learn the truth from him."

I gained him with difficulty through the shifting throngs, and without surprise he followed me—so unquestioningly that I thought him little better than a poor witless