1 And then we saw the fold of a white tunic among the trees, and a gleam of gold.
2 It is true that our tunic was torn and stained with brown stains which had been blood.
3 For they were not white tunics, nor white togas; they were of all colors, no two of them alike.
4 Thus we learned their name, and we stood watching them go, till their white tunic was lost in the blue mist.
5 Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over on the moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair, in our face.
6 Women work in the fields, and their white tunics in the wind are like the wings of sea-gulls beating over the black soil.
7 Their white tunic was torn, and the branches had cut the skin of their arms, but they spoke as if they had never taken notice of it, nor of weariness, nor of fear.
8 We are writing this on the paper we had hidden in our tunic together with the written pages we had brought for the World Council of Scholars, but never given to them.
9 Then the Golden One saw us, and they did not move, kneeling there, looking at us, and circles of light played upon their white tunic, from the sun on the water of the moat, and one sparkling drop fell from a finger of their hand held as frozen in the air.