Oman’s head drooped low. He clasped his two hands tightly over his breast, and then suddenly threw them out as if in supplication. Hushka, not understanding that Oman would have warded him off, took the hands gently in his own. The warm, living clasp suddenly broke through Oman’s carefully built barrier of concealment. He sank to his knees upon the stone pavement, and his brain burned with the fire of his knowledge. He was losing his self-control. As tears fell from his eyes, his thoughts also flowed, till he was overwhelmed in the torrent of his wretchedness, and crouched, rent with emotion, at the feet of the troubled man who supported him. The dusk deepened. Through the long, carven hall, eerie shadows fell, and the orange light of the west melted to purple and then to black, till the two were alone in darkness. Hushka now knelt by Oman’s side, and soothed the youth with fragmentary words, till he was quieter in his grief. There followed silence, pregnant and foreboding. Hushka would not break it. Heavy-hearted, dreading unknown things, he bowed his head, waiting. And gradually it was borne in upon Oman that there was no longer any way of concealment. He must give utterance to the truth: his tragedy. How he began, how he told it, he could not afterwards remember. At first the words choked him, then they came faster, finally in fury, till the pent-up emotions of years were finding expression beside that of the remorse of yesterday. Hushka remained at his side, silent, stunned, at first, by the feeling displayed by this youth, this child to life. It was the first thing that impressed him:—the silent suffering that Oman must have known. Hushka could understand him there so entirely! He knew each smallest phase, each bitter turn of the wheel of solitary misery! In his heart, as yet, was only pity. Oman came at last to the end of his strength and his confession. Crouching there, numb, blind with tears, swollen-lipped, breathing thickly and in gasps, he found himself, like one groping in a fog, uttering vague questions—doubts—hopes. “But it is true? Those words—are they the law, then? Must Oman follow them? Must I be thrust forth? Master!—Help me!—Master!” And Hushka felt the wretched creature clasping his knees in the darkness. Then silence fell. Only Oman’s breath could be heard, rushing in and out, like that of a dying dog. At this sound, Hushka felt a sudden revulsion, a sudden despairing anger with him. Was Oman to be pitied:—Oman, who had wrecked his, Hushka’s life, as well as his own? The monk rose from his knees, walked across the hall, and stood at one of the unscreened openings, staring out into the starlit night. Here, silently, he struggled with himself:—struggled for justice toward Oman, justice toward the Samgha, toward himself. Oman had not moved from the place where he was at first. Only now he lay prone on the floor, and his breathing was quiet. He was waiting, without any feeling, without any emotion, for his sentence.