THE PILGRIMS are afraid. The woman begins to cry, the men in an agony of wretchedness shout at them to stop. Dogs break out barking and are cruelly whipped into silence broken by moans. The night seems endless and men and women begin to wrangle as to who among them was to blame. They shriek and shout and as they are ready to unsheathe their knives the darkness pales, the morning light overflows the mountain tops. Suddenly they become still and gasp for breath as they gaze at the figure lying dead. The women sob out loud and men hide their faces in their hands. A few try to slink away unnoticed, but their crime keeps them chained to their victim. They ask each other in bewilderment, 'Who will show us the path?' The old man from the East bends his head and says: 'The Victim.' They sit still and silent. Again speaks the old man, 'We refused him in doubt, we killed him in anger, now we shall accept him in love, for in his death he lives in the life of us all, the great Victim.' And they all stand up and mingle their voices and sing, 'Victory to the Victim.'
I HAVE donned this new robe to-day because my body feels like singing. It is not enough that I am given to my love once and for ever, but out of that I must fashion new gifts every day; and shall I not seem a fresh offering, dressed in a new robe? My heart, like the evening sky, has its endless passion for colour, and therefore I change my veils, which have now the green of the cool young grass and now that of the winter rice. To-day my robe is tinted with the rain-rimmed blue of the sky. It brings to my limbs the colour of the boundless, the colour of the oversea hills; and it carries in its folds the delight of summer clouds flying in the wind.
