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What an old, old story it was to him this anguish and remorse! These ecstasies of resolution that vanished like a cloud-wrack these protestations and noble sentiments that counted for naught in conduct! And his was to be the whole heritage of impotence and futility; he, too, was to struggle and agonize and to finish with his foot in the trap! This idea was like a white-hot goad to him.
And where can coarseness so vanish into polished expression as in that diamond-like language all terseness and sparkle which, as friendly to Wit in its airiest prose, as hostile to Passion in its torrent of cloud-wrack of poetry, seems invented by the Grace out of spite to the Muse? No! Justice is justice!
And glancing from desolate, wind-swept streets to flying cloud-wrack, I judged there was worse to come and knew a strange, unnatural joy therefore, as I bent my head to buffeting wind and reined the fiery animal I bestrode to less furious pace.
Great drops of rain fell upon the soldiers' drums. Young, beautiful, unconscious of any wrong, Charlotte Corday stood beneath the shadow of the knife. At the supreme moment a sudden ray from the setting sun broke through the cloud-wrack and fell upon her slender figure until she glowed in the eyes of the startled spectators like a statue cut in burnished bronze.
How often our prayers are offered to a mere name! How seldom through the cloud-wrack beneath His feet do we see His face! This absorbed contemplation is the necessary preliminary of all real prayer, and there is a truth in the thought that such losing of self in gazing on God is the highest form of prayer.
For a long time I stood in the shadow of the window curtains staring out upon a moon hidden ever and anon in flying cloud-wrack; but at last I turned and wandered away with some vague idea of finding Anthony, and as I went, the lights and glitter, the sounds of voices and laughter grew ever more distasteful, and turning my back on it all, I found my way into a wide corridor.
The storm had blown over, but the moon was every now and then obscured by masses of scurrying cloud-wrack, and in these periods of semi-darkness Doomsman and Stockader were hardly to be told apart. So closely packed was the scrimmage that the use of any missile weapon was impossible.
But, ever and anon as they stumbled forward, guiding themselves by instinct, the moon sent forth a pale beam from the whirling cloud-wrack a phantom light that stole upon them, sudden and ghost-like, and, like a ghost, was gone again; what time Black Roger, following hard on Beltane's heel, crossed himself and muttered fragments of forgotten prayers.
On a winter's night you will see the Pleiades, or other bright constellations, varying in brilliancy from moment to moment as some invisible cloud-wrack floats across the heavens. So, brother, every evil thing that we do rises up and gets diffused through our atmosphere, and blots out from our vision the face of God Himself, the blessed Son.
Since then what countless winds have blown across the world, and cloud-wrack! And this older century is now but a clamor of the memory. What mystery it is! What were the happenings in that pin-prick of universe called London? Of all the millions of ant hills this side Orion, what about this one? London was so certain it was the center of circumambient space. Tintinnabulate, little Bell!
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