He loved her and he suffered: doubting, though he could not abandon her.

The air was fresh about him, the world lay sunlit under his eyes.

But the beauty of the world had not saved young and tender women, who on such mornings had walked barefoot, none comforting them, to the fiery expiation of their crimes.
Perhaps--perhaps among the thousands who had witnessed their last agony, one man hidden in the crowd, had vainly closed ears and eyes, one man had died a hundred deaths in one..