Intuitively he knew that his words would no longer come with power.

Some virtue had gone out of him.

And with this loss of confidence in himself came again a desire to be away from the crowded center.
Off to the south was the desert.

There he could be alone; there face God and his own conscience and have his inmost soul declare the truth about himself.

In his sadness he would have liked to lead the people with him, lead them away from some evil, some falsity that had crept in about them; he knew not what it was nor how it had come, but Zion had been defiled.