Are you indeed a man like us?
Are you not rather an old wizard who lives among these hills, and
will not a wind arise presently and crumble you into dust?'
'I will tell you of myself,' replied the knight, 'for now that I am
the last of the fellowship, 'I may tell all and witness for God. Look
at the Rose of Rubies on my helmet, and see the symbol of my life and
of my hope.' And then he told the lad this story, but with always
more frequent pauses; and, while he told it, the Rose shone a deep
blood-colour in the firelight, and the lad stuck the cock's
feathers in the earth in front of him, and moved them about as though
he made them actors in the play.
'I live in a land far from this, and was one of the Knights of St.
John,' said the old man; 'but I was one of those in the Order who
always longed for more arduous labours in the service of the Most
High. At last there came to us a knight of Palestine, to whom the
truth of truths had been revealed by God Himself. He had seen a great
Rose of Fire, and a Voice out of the Rose had told him how men would
turn from the light of their own hearts, and bow down before outer
order and outer fixity, and that then the light would cease, and none
escape the curse except the foolish good man who could not, and the
passionate wicked man who would not, think.
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