The brethren are a tactful folk and the endemic courtesy which is custom, if not law, with them mitigates against the impropriety of inquiring too deeply into matters which might prove sensitive. They assumed, doubtless, that Horemheb had had his reasons for his act, reasons which must be, in his own mind at least, sufficient for its accomplishment, reasons it might not be wise to inquire into. They did determine that he had gone to the platform at night, however, which is not customary, though it is not unlawful, for the brethren. Perhaps he should not have done that. Who knew what he had seen there? It was conjectured it must have been unpleasant. The brethren were content to let Horemheb bear the weight of this secret, if it were one. Better he than they. Now, of course, all accepted the fact that Horemheb was blind, and old, and foolish. Still he had seen something that they had not seen. But perhaps it was better that it not have been seen.
Horemheb, of course, never told anyone what he had seen. From this one might have supposed that perhaps he had learned the secret, or that he had apprehended the truth, or that he had discovered the memory, or the thing like a memory, which lay like a stone and a fountain within the brethren. But this was not so. If he had learned these things, or recollected them, or whatever, he would not have returned later to the platform. You see, to the contrary, at the platform that night, he had not really learned the secret; he had not there, before the platform, understood the memory, the half-suspected memory, which might not even exist; no, he had not there, at the platform, perceived the truth at last, something which might have redeemed himself and the brethren, which might have made it all worthwhile, or, if not that, at least intelligible; no, no coin was obtained there of inestimable worth, or even one of paltry value, nor even a truth which might in its glory or hideousness have blasted him. Rather it was something else he saw there, something which he had not expected and which frightened him. It was only after he had returned home and thought and thought, and twice dreamed, that he suspected the meaning of what he saw, not that he knew that meaning, or understood it, but only that he suspected it. What he had seen there, he became certain, although it was not in itself the secret, not in itself the truth, or the memory, was something which nonetheless appertained to the secret, something which was not the truth or the memory but which might not be entirely unrelated to the truth, or to the memory, something which had something to do with all three, or one, as the case might be, or else it was something which might, in some terrible way, itself know the secret, the truth, the memory. After Horemheb had inflicted such indignity and pain upon himself, he did not return for revolutions to the platform. Then, one evening, ten revolutions, and a hundred mournings and festivals, after he had inflicted his cruel injuries upon himself, that he might not again see what he saw, that his eyes should never show him such a thing again, he returned to the platform. We do not really know why he returned to that fateful place. Perhaps, in the beginning, he was curious to know if he had been mistaken on that distant night, if he had really seen what he thought he had seen, or if it were an illusion of the senses, or a dream. Perhaps, on the other hand, he was mad or labored in the grip of some monstrous compulsion. In any event he had had the string tied by the brethren during the brightness of the day and then, one evening, when the sun was sinking behind the trees and the shadows of the fence were long and jagged on the clearing, and the fruit of the lantern trees was becoming visible in the gloom, he returned to the platform. Since that time he had made the journey several times, many, many times, a great number of times, taking with him his staff and his small sack of meal. The string which was now again dried and thin, worn by the winter and the weather, pelted by the rain, sometimes sheathed with ice, chilled by snow, swaying beneath the