I knew by sad experience how unsettling and unnerving it is
to be for ever waiting for a catastrophe which you are convinced must
befall, and which you can neither avert nor accelerate.
Though it affects me specially, as being the person most concerned, I am
still conscious that the natural sympathy which I have observed in you,
and your regard for Gabriel's father, would both combine to render you
unhappy if you knew the hopelessness and yet the vagueness of the fate
which threatens me. I feared to disturb your mind, and I was therefore
silent, though at some cost to myself, for my isolation has not been the
least of the troubles which have weighed me down.
Many signs, however, and chief among them the presence of the Buddhists
upon the coast as described by you this morning, have convinced me that
the weary waiting is at last over and that the hour of retribution is at
hand. Why I should have been allowed to live nearly forty years after
my offence is more than I can understand, but it is possible that those
who had command over my fate know that such a life is the greatest of
all penalties to me.
Never for an hour, night or day, have they suffered me to forget that
they have marked me down as their victim. Their accursed astral bell
has been ringing my knell for two-score years, reminding me ever that
there is no spot upon earth where I can hope to be in safety. Oh, the
peace, the blessed peace of dissolution! Come what may on the other
side of the tomb, I shall at least be quit of that thrice terrible
sound.
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