Striding from stone to stone he told himself, that ere he could begin a new life, he must do penance--some heavy penance; but what was it to be?
He was standing at the very margin of the brook, hemmed in by cliffs, and was bending down to it, but before he had moistened his lips he drew back: just because he was so thirsty he resolved to deny himself drink.

Hastily, almost vehemently, he turned his back on the spring, and after this little victory over himself, his storm-tossed heart seemed a little calmer.

Far, far from hence and from the wilderness and from the Sacred Mountain he felt impelled to fly, and he would gladly have fled then and there to a distance.

Whither should he flee?
It was all the same, for he was in search of suffering, and suffering, like weeds, grows on every road.

And from whom?
This question repeated itself again and again as if he had shouted it in the very home of echo, and the answer was not hard to find: "It is from yourself that you would flee.