“How can we find him in this gloom?” the younger woman asked.

Before the question could be answered, they heard the clanking of his chains. The terrifying sound made them fear him all the more.

“Madman … please … we are your friends … I am the Singer’s mother … I saw you try to save him at the trial …” Her words fell out in unconnected phrases.

When their eyes had grown accustomed to the light, they found him crumpled like a titan child against the wall. No more a threat.

“Go away,” he said, moving very little.

“Please, Madman … we are your friends. I really am the mother of the man you would have saved.”

The other woman said nothing as the two of them continued. The Madman said in his despair, “No one could save him … the World Hater won. He spent the night in laughter at the gallows.”

“I loved my son,” the mother said, “and I must thank you for loving him as I.”

“Yes, I loved him. For one brief day, my mind was well … so short a time. I knew meaning and reason. But now he’s dead.”

“And I with him,” she said.

“Today the Hater will be back,” the Madman said, “with his absurd pipe. He will play and play until he leaves me foaming in insanity again. I’ll writhe and wallow to his joy and die in hopeless chains.”

“We all have chains,” at length the silent woman joined in. “I too may go back to chains I thought I’d left for good. When I try to sing the Ancient Star-Song the verses are disjointed and apart.”

“I cannot tell how long my mind will stay when hate returns today,” sighed the Madman.

The sunlight broke and came at once above the wall and ran in golden streams along the blackened stones. It set the grove aglow with bronze earth and green wax leaves. The gray was swallowed up in color and an oriole sang deep-throated joy.

The three sat in the instant morning that had baptized them with suddenness and left them studying the pathway through the grove. At the far end, they saw a little girl walking hand in hand with a tall man.

On a little knoll of ground just outside the grove, the stranger stopped and released the child and threw his arms into the air and wrapped a melody in sunlight and threw the triumph of the morning against the grove and wall.

“In the beginning was the song of love,” he sang.

The two women were on their feet within the instant and running toward the thrilling song that came with day.

The Madman stood and strained against his chains. He could not move, although he threw his massive weight against the iron that held him from the Singer. The steel cut his wrists but did not break. Then at the zenith of his struggle he remembered all at once the principle of reason. He let back on the chains till they were slack. “Once more, Lord,” he called out through the trees. “Once more.”