Page:Germ Growers.djvu/234

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LEÄFAR.
229

have been an hour, but it seemed like days and years to me. But at last there was a change, and of a sudden I became conscious of pain—physical pain multiplied and intensified indefinitely beyond all my experience or imagination—

"All fiery pangs on battle-fields
On fever beds where sick men toss."

All these seemed to wring me, and rack me, and strive to wrench the soul out of me, and ever as the pain grew, there grew also the consciousness that if I would but meet my enemy's eye with one moment's glance of acquiescence all the pain would be exchanged for ease; and oh! how delicious the very thought of ease appeared to be, more delicious than all the delights of all the senses.

Meantime, I was conscious of nothing external except the eyes of my adversary, the expression of which was an extraordinary mixture of persuasiveness and deadly determination, now and then crossed, however, by a furious flash of malignity, and again by a flash of hideous and awful terror.

But all the time also I was doing with all my might what Leäfar had bade me do, and it seemed to me as if my will were growing one with God's will, and it seemed to me as if I stood under the cross, and felt in