VII.
On the floor of a little room Mary lay, her face to the ground. In her
ears was the hideousness of a threat that had fastened on her abruptly
like a cheetah in the dark. From below came the sound of banqueting.
Beyond was the Bitter Sea, the stars dancing in its ripples; and there in
the shadow of the evergreens was the hut in which that Sephôrah lived to
whom long ago Martha had forbidden her to speak. Through the lattice came
the scent of olive-trees, and with it the irresistible breath of spring.
In its caress the threat which had made her its own presently was lifted,
and mingling with other things fused into them. The kaleidoscope of time
and events which visits those that drown possessed her, and for a second
Mary relived a year.
There had been the sudden flight from Magdala, the first days with the
Master, the gorges of the Jordan, the journey to the coast, the glittering
green scales of that hydra the sea. Then the loiterings on the banks of
the sacred Leontes, the journey back to Galilee, the momentary halt at
Magdala, the sail past Bethsaïda, Capharnahum, Chorazin, the fording of
the river, the trip to Cæsarea Philippi, the snow and gold of Hermon, the
visit to Gennesareth, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the return to
Bethany.
Her recollections intercrossed, scenes that were trivial ousted others
that were grave; the purple limpets of Sidon, the shrine of Ashtaroth, the
invective at Bethsaïda, the transfiguration on the mountain height, the
cure of lepers, and the presence that coerced. Yet through them all
certain things remained immutable, and of these, primarily her contact
with the Christ.
To her, Jesus was not the Son of man alone, he was the light of this
world, the usher of the next. When he spoke, there came to her a sense of
frightened joy so acute that the hypostatical union which left even the
disciples perplexed was by her realized and understood. She had the faith
of a little child. And on the hills and through the intervales over which
they journeyed, in the glare of the eager sun or beneath the wattled
boughs, the emanations of the Divine filled her with transports so
contagious that they affected even Thomas, who was skeptical by birth; and
when, after the descent from Hermon, two or three of the disciples mused
together over the spectacle which they had seen, the rhyme of her lips
parted ineffably. She too had seen him aureoled with the sun, dazzling as
the snow-fields on the heights. To her it was ever in that aspect he
appeared, with a radiance so intense even that there had been moments in
which she had veiled her eyes as from a light that only eagles could
support. To her, marvels were as natural as the escape of night. At
Beth-Seân she had heard him speak to dumb beasts, and never doubted but
that they answered him. At Dan she had seen a short-eared hare rush to him
for refuge, and follow him afterwards as a dog might do. At Kinnereth he
had called to a lark that from a tree-top was pouring its heart out to the
morning, and the lark had fluttered down and nestled in his hand. At
Gadara he had tamed wild doves, and a swarm of bees had stopped and
glistened in his hair. At Cæsarea, when he began to speak, the thrushes
that had been singing ceased; and when the parables were delivered, began
anew, louder, more jubilant than before, and continued to sing until he
blessed them, when they mounted in one long ascending line straight to the
zenith above. At his approach the little gold-bellied fish of the Leontes
had leaped from the stream. In the suburbs of Sidon the jackals had fawned
at his feet. The underbrush had parted to let him pass, and where he
passed white roses came and the tenderness of anemones. At times he seemed
to her immaterial as a shadow in a dream, at others appalling as the
desert; and once when, in prayer, she entered with him into the intimacy
of the infinite, she caught the shiver of an invisible harp whose notes
seemed to fall from the night. And as she journeyed, her love expanded
with the horizon. She loved with a love no woman’s heart has transcended.
In its prodigality and ascending gammes there was place for nothing save
the Ideal.
The little band meanwhile lived as strangers on earth. Out of her abundant
means their simple wants were supplied. She was less a burden than a
sustenance; her faith bridged many a doubtful hour; and when, as often
occurred, they disputed among themselves concerning their future rank and
precedence, Mary dreamed of a paradise more pure.
One evening, near the rushes of Lake Phiala, where the Jordan leaps anew
to the light, a Greek merchant who had refused them shelter at Seleucia
ambled that way on an ass, and would have stopped, perhaps, but one of the
band scoffed him, and he rode on, and disappeared in the haze of the
hills.
Unobserved, the Master had seen and heard; presently he called them to
where he stood.
“Do not think,” he admonished—“do not think that because you imitate the
Pharisees you are perfecting your lives. They fast, they pray, they weep,
and they mortify the flesh; but to them one thing is impossible, charity
to the failings of others. Whoso then shall come to you, be he friend or
foe, penitent or thief, receive him kindly. Aid the helpless, console the
unfortunate, forgive your enemy, and forget yourselves—that is charity.
Without it the kingdom of heaven is lost to you. There, there is neither
Greek nor Jew, male nor female; nor can it come to you until the garment
of shame is trampled under foot, until two are as one, and the body which
is without is as the soul within.”
Thereat, with a gesture of exquisite indulgence, he turned and left them
to the stars.
Mary had heard, and in the palingenesis disclosed she saw space wrapped in
a luminous atmosphere, such as she fancied lay behind the sun. There,
instead of the thrones and diadems of the elect, was an immutable realm in
which there was neither death nor life, clear ether merely, charged with
beatitudes. And so, when the disciples disputed among themselves, Mary
dreamed of diaphanous hours and immaculate days that knew no night, and in
this wise lived until from the terrace of Jerusalem’s Temple the Master
bade her return to Bethany and wait him there.
Obedience to that command was bitter to her. She did not murmur, however.
“Rabboni,” she cried, “let me but do your will on earth, and afterwards
save me or destroy me as your pleasure is.”
With that she had gone to her sister’s house, and to the bewildered Martha
poured out her heart anew. There could be no question of forgiveness now,
of penitence even; her sins, such as they were, had been remitted by one
to whom pardon was an attribute. And this doubtless Martha understood, for
she took her in her arms unreproachfully and mingled her tears with hers.
Where all is marvel the marvellous disappears. To the accounts which Mary
gave of her journeys with the little band that followed the Master, Martha
listened with an attention which nothing could distract. With her she
sailed on the lovely lake; with her she visited cities smothering in the
scent of cassia and of sugar-cane; with her she passed through glens where
panthers prowled, and bandits crueller than they. With her eyes she saw
the listening multitudes, with her ears she heard again the words of
divine forgiveness; and, the lulab and the citron in her hands, she
assisted at the Feast of the Tabernacles, and watched the vain attempt to
charm the recalcitrant Temple and captivate the inimical town.
For in Jerusalem, in place of the reassuring confidence of peasants, was
the irritable incredulity of priests; instead of meadows, courts. Besides,
was not this prophet from Galilee, and what good had ever come from there?
Then, too, he was not an authorized teacher. He belonged to no school. The
followers of Hillel, the disciples of Shammai, did not recognize him. He
was merely a fractious Nazarene trained in the shop of a carpenter; one
who, by repeating that it was easier for a camel to pass through a
needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, flattered
basely the mob of mendicants that surrounded him. The rabble admired, but
the clergy stood aloof. When he was not ignored he was disdained. Save the
pleb, no one listened.
Presently he spoke louder. Into the grave music of the Syro-Chaldaic
tongue he put the mutterings of thunder. Where he had preached, he
upbraided; in place of exquisite parables came sonorous threats. He
blessed but rarely, sometimes he cursed. That mosaic, the Law, he treated
like a cobweb; and to the arrogant clergy a rumor filtered that this
vagabond, who had not where to lay his head, declared his ability to
destroy the Temple, and to rebuild it, in three days, anew.
A rumor such as that was incredible. Inquiries were made. The rumor was
substantiated. It was learned that he healed the sick, cured the blind;
that he was in league, perhaps, with the Pharisees.
The Sanhedrim took counsel. They were Sadducees every one. The Pharisees
were their hereditary foes. Both were militant, directing men and things
as best they could. The Sadducees held strictly to the letter of the Law;
the Pharisees held to the Law, and to tradition as well. But the Sadducees
were in power, the Pharisees were not. The former endeavored in every way
to maintain their authority over the people; and against that authority,
against the aristocracy, the priesthood, and the accomplices of foreign
dominion, the Pharisees ceaselessly excited the mob. In their inability to
overthrow the pontificate, they undermined it. With microscopic attention
they examined and criticised every act of the clergy; and, with a view of
showing the incompetence of the priests, they affected rigid theories in
regard to ritualistic points. Every detail of the ceremonial office was
watched by them with eyes that were never pleased. They asserted that the
rolls of the Law from which the priests read the Pentateuch were made of
impure matter, and, having handled them, the priests had become impure as
well. The manner in which the incense was made and offered, the minutiæ
governing the sacrifices, the legality of hierarchal decisions—on each and
every possible subject they exerted themselves to show the unworthiness of
the officiants, insinuating even that the names of the fathers of many of
the priests were not inscribed at Zipporim in the archives of Jeshana. As
a consequence, many of those whose rights the Pharisees affected to uphold
saw in the hierarchy little more than a body of men unworthy to approach
the altar, a group of Herodians who in religion lacked every requisite for
the service of God, and who in public and in private were bankrupts in
patriotism, morality, and shame.
The possibility, therefore, that this fractious demagogue had found favor
with the Pharisees was grave. He was becoming a force. He threatened many
a prerogative. Moreover, Jerusalem had had enough of agitators. People
were drawn by their promises into the solitudes, and there incited to
revolt. Rome did not look upon these things leniently. If they continued,
Tiberius was quite capable of putting Judæa in a yoke which it would not
be easy to carry. Clearly the Nazarene was seditious, and as such to be
abolished. The difficulty was to abolish him and yet conciliate the mob.
It was then that the Sanhedrim took counsel. As a result, and with the
hope of entrapping him into some blasphemous utterance on which a charge
would lie, they sent meek-eyed Scribes to question him concerning the
authority that he claimed. He routed the meek-eyed Scribes. Then, fancying
that he might be seduced into some expression which could be construed as
treason, they sent young and earnest men to learn from him their duty to
Rome. The young and earnest men returned crestfallen and abashed.
The elders, nonplussed, debated. A levite suspected that the casuistry and
marvellous cures of the Nazarene must be due to a knowledge of the
incommunicable name, Shemhammephorash, seared on stone in the thunders of
Sinai, and which to utter was to summon life or beckon death. Another had
heard that while in Galilee he was believed to be in league with
Baal-Zebub, Lord of Flies.
To this gossip no attention was paid. Annas, merely—the old high-priest,
father-in-law of Caiaphas, who officiated in his stead—laughed to himself.
There was no such stone, there was no such god. Another idea had been
welcomed. A festival was in progress; there was gayety in the
neighborhood, drinking too; and as over a million of pilgrims were herded
together, now and then an offence occurred. The previous night, for
instance, a woman had been arrested for illicit commerce.
Annas tapped on his chin. He had the pompous air of a chameleon, the same
long, thin lips, the large, protruding eyes.
“Take her before the Galilean,” he said. “He claims to be a rabbi; he must
know the Law. If he acquit her, it is heresy, and for that a charge will
lie. Does he condemn her he is at our mercy, for he will have alienated
the mob.”
A smile of perfect understanding passed like a vagrant breeze across the
faces of the elders, and the levites were ordered to lead the prisoner to
the Christ.
They found him in the Woman’s Court. From a lateral chamber a priest,
unfit for other than menial services because of a carbuncle on his lip,
dropped the wood he was sorting for the altar and gazed curiously at the
advancing throng, in which the prisoner was.
She must have been very fair, but now her features were distorted with
anguish, veiled with shame. The blue robe she wore was torn, and a sleeve
rent to the shoulder disclosed a bare white arm. She was a wife, a mother
too. Her name was Ahulah; her husband was a shoemaker. At the Gannath
Gate, where her home was, were two little children. She worshipped them,
and her husband she adored. Some hallucination, a tremor of the flesh, the
flush of wine, and there, circled by a leering crowd, she crouched, her
life disgraced, irrecoverable for evermore.
The charge was made, the usual question propounded. The Master had glanced
at her but once. He seemed to be looking afar, beyond the Temple and its
terraces, beyond the horizon itself. But the accusers were impatient. He
bent forward and with a finger wrote on the ground. The letters were
illegible, perhaps, yet the symbol of obliteration was in that dust which
the morrow would disperse. Again he wrote, but the charge was repeated,
louder, more impatiently than before.
Jesus straightened himself. With the weary indulgence of one to whom
hearts are as books, he looked about him, then to the dome above.
“Whoever is without sin among you,” he declared, “may cast the first
stone.”
When he looked again the crowd had slunk away. Only Ahulah remained, her
head bowed on her bare white arm. From the lateral chamber the priest
still peered, the carbuncle glistening on his lip.
“Did none condemn you?” the Master asked.
And as she sobbed merely, he added: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin
no more.”
To the elders this was very discomforting. They had failed to unmask him
as a traitor to God, to Rome even, or yet as a demagogue defying the Law.
They did not care to question again. He had worsted them three times. Nor
could they without due cause arrest him, for there were the Pharisees.
Besides, a religious trial was full of risk, and the coöperation of the
procurator not readily to be relied on. It was that coöperation they
needed most, for with it such feeling as might be aroused would fall on
Rome and not on them. As for Pilate, he could put a sword in front of what
he said.
In their enforced inaction they got behind that wall of prejudice where
they and their kin feel most secure, and there waited, prepared at the
first opportunity to invoke the laws of their ancestors, laws so
cumbersome and complex that the Romans, accustomed to the clearest
pandects, had laughed and left them, erasing only the right to kill.
At last chance smiled. Into Jerusalem a rumor filtered that the Nazarene
they hated so had raised the dead, that the suburbs hailed him as the
Messiah, and that he proclaimed himself the Son of God. At once the
Sanhedrim reassembled. A political deliverer they might have welcomed, but
in a Messiah they had little faith. The very fact of his Messiahship
constituted him a claimant to the Jewish throne, and as such a pretender
with whom Pilate could deal. Moreover—and here was the point—to claim
divinity was to attack the unity of God. Of impious blasphemy there was no
higher form.
It were better, Annas suggested, that a man should die than that a nation
should perish—a truism, surely, not to be gainsaid.
That night it was decided that Jesus and Judaism could not live together;
a price was placed upon his head, and to the blare of four hundred
trumpets excommunication was pronounced.
Of all of these incidents save the last Mary had been necessarily aware.
In company with Johanna, the wife of Herod’s steward, Mary, wife of
Clopas, and Salomè, mother of Zebedee’s children, she had heard him
reiterate the burning words of Jeremiah, and seen him purge the Temple of
its traffickers; she had heard, too, the esoteric proclamation, “Before
Abraham was, I am;” and she had seen him lash the Sadducees with
invective. She had been present when a letter was brought from Abgar
Uchomo, King of Edessa, to Jesus, “the good Redeemer,” in which the
potentate prayed the prophet to come and heal him of a sickness which he
had, offering him a refuge from the Jews, and quaintly setting forth the
writer’s belief that Jesus was God or else His Son. She had been present,
also, when the charge was made against Ahulah, and had comforted that
unfortunate in womanly ways. “Surely,” she had said, “if the Master who
does not love you can forgive, how much more readily must your husband who
does!” Whereupon Ahulah had become her slave, tending her thereafter with
almost bestial devotion.
These episodes, one after another, she related to Martha; to Eleazer, her
brother; to Simon, Martha’s husband; to anyone that chanced that way. For
it was then that the Master had bade her go to Bethany. For a little space
he too had forsaken Jerusalem. Now and then with some of his followers he
would venture in the neighborhood, yet only to be off again through the
scorched hollows of the Ghôr before the sun was up.
These things it was that paraded before her as she lay on the floor of the
little room, felled by the hideousness of a threat that had sprung upon
her, abruptly, like a cheetah in the dark. To Martha and to the others on
one subject alone had she been silent, and now at the moment it dominated
all else.
From the day on which she joined the little band to whom the future was to
give half of this world and all of the next, Judas had been ever at her
ear. As a door that opens and shuts at the will of a hand, his presence
and absence had barred the vistas or left them clear. At first he had
affected her as a scarabæus affects the rose. She knew of him, and that
was all. When he spoke, she thought of other things. And as the blind
remain unawakened by the day, he never saw that where the wanton had been
the saint had come. To him she was a book of ivory bound in gold, whose
contents he longed to possess; she was a book, but one from which whole
chapters had been torn, the preface destroyed; and when his increasing
insistence forced itself upon her, demanding, obviously, countenance or
rebuke, she walked serenely on her way, disdaining either, occupied with
higher things. It was of the Master only that she appeared to think. When
he spoke, it was to her as though God really lived on earth; her eyes
lighted ineffably, and visibly all else was instantly forgot. At that time
her life was a dream into whose charmed precincts a bat had flown.
These things, gradually, Judas must have understood. In Mary’s eyes he may
have caught the intimation that to her now only the ideal was real; or the
idea may have visited him that in the infinite of her faith he disappeared
and ceased to be. In any event he must have taken counsel with himself,
for one day he approached her with a newer theme.
“I have knocked on the tombs; they are dumb.”
Mary, with that grace with which a woman gathers a flower when thinking of
him whom she loves, bent a little and turned away.
“Have you heard of the Buddha?” he asked. “Babylon is peopled with his
disciples. One of them met Jesus in the desert, and taught him his belief.
It is that he preaches now, only the Buddha did not know of a heaven, for
there is none.”
And he added, after a pause: “I tell you I have knocked on the tombs;
there is no answer there.”
With that, as a panther falls asleep, his claw blood-red, Judas nodded and
left her to her thoughts.
“In Eternity there is room for everything,” she said, when he came to her
again.
“Eternity is an abyss which the tomb uses for a sewer,” he answered. “Its
flood is corruption. The day only exists, but in it is that freedom which
waves possess. Mary, if you would but taste it with me! Oh, to mix with
you as light with day, as stream with sea, I would suck the flame that
flickers on the walls of sepulchres.”
She shuddered, and he saw it.
“You have taught me to love,” he hissed; “do not teach me now to hate.”
Mary mastered her revolt. “Judas, the day will come when you will cease to
speak as you do.”
“You believe, then, still?”
“Yes, surely; and so do you.”
“The day will come,” he muttered, “when you will cease to believe.”
“And you too,” she answered. “For then you will _know_.”
The dialogue with its variations continued, at intervals, for months.
There were times, weeks even, when he avoided all speech with her. Then,
abruptly, when she expected it least, he would return more volcanic than
before. These attacks she accustomed herself to regard as necessary,
perhaps, to the training of patience, of charity too, and so bore with
them, until at last Jerusalem was reached. Meanwhile she held to her trust
as to a fringe of the mantle of Christ. To her the past was a grammar, its
name—To-morrow. And in the service of the Master, in the future which he
had evoked, she journeyed and dreamed.
But in Jerusalem Judas grew acrider. He had fits of unnecessary laughter,
and spells of the deepest melancholy. He quarrelled with anyone who would
let him, and then for the irritation he had displayed he would make amends
that were wholly slavish. His companions distrusted him. He had been seen
talking amicably with the corrupt levites, the police of the Temple, and
once he had been detected in a wine-shop of low repute. The Master,
apparently, noticed nothing of this; nor did Mary, whose thoughts were on
other things.
At Bethany one evening Judas came to her. The sun, sinking through clouds,
placed in the west the tableau of a duel to the death between a titan and
a god. There was the glitter of gigantic swords, and the red of immortal
blood.
“Mary,” he began, and as he spoke there was a new note in his voice—“Mary,
I have watched and waited, and to those that watch how many lamps burn
out! One after another those that I tended went. There was a flicker, a
little smoke, and they had gone. I tried to relight them, but perhaps the
oil was spent; perhaps, too, I was like the blind that hold a torch. My
way has not been clear. The faith I had, and which, I do not know, but
which, it may be, would have been strengthened, evaporated when you came.
The rays of the sun I had revered became as the threads of shadows,
interconnecting life and death. In them I could see but you. In the jaw of
night, in the teeth of day, always I have seen you. Mary, love is a net
which woman throws. In casting yours—there! unintentionally, I know—you
caught my soul. It is yours now wholly until time shall cease to be. Will
you take it, Mary, or will you put it aside, a thing forever dead?”
Mary made no answer. It may be she had not heard. In the west both titan
and god had disappeared. Above, in a field of stars, the moon hung, a
scythe of gold. The air was still, the hush of locusts accentuating the
silence and bidding it be at rest. In a house near by there were lights
shining. A woman looked out and called into the night.
Then, as though moved by some jealousy of the impalpable, Judas leaned
forward and peered into her face.
“It is the Master who keeps you from me, is it not?”
“It is my belief,” she answered, simply.
“It was he that gave it to you. Mary, do you know that there is a price
upon his head? Do you know that if I cannot slake my love, at least I can
gorge my hate? Do you know that, Mary? Do you know it? Now choose between
your belief and me; if you prefer the former, the Sanhedrim will have him
to-morrow. There, your sister is calling; go—and choose.”
It was with the hideousness of this threat in her ears that Mary escaped
to the little room where her childhood had been passed and flung herself
on the floor. From beyond came the sound of banqueting. Martha was
entertaining the Lord, his disciples as well; and Mary knew that her aid
was needed. But the threat pinioned and held her down. To accede was
death, not of the body alone, but of the soul as well. There was no clear
pool in which she might cleanse the stain; there could be no forgiveness,
no obliteration, nothing in fact save the loss never to be recovered of
life in the diaphanous hours and immaculate days of which she had dreamed
so long.
For a little space she tried to comfort herself. Perhaps Judas was not in
earnest; perhaps even he had lied. And if he had not, was there not time
in plenty? The desert was neighborly. She could follow the Master there,
and minister to him till the sky opened and the kingdom was prepared. And
the threat, coupled with that perspective, charmed, and for the moment had
for her that enticement which the quarrels and kisses of children equally
possess. She would warn him secretly, she decided, for surely as yet he
did not know; she would warn him, and before the sun was up he could be
beyond the Sanhedrim’s reach, and she preparing to follow. For a moment
she lost herself in anticipation; then, the threat loosening its hold, she
stood up, her face very white in the starlight, her eyes brave and alert.
Already her plan was formed; and, taking a vase that she had brought with
her from Magdala, she hurried to the room below.
The Master; the disciples; Eleazer, her brother; Simon, her sister’s
husband, were all at meat. Martha was serving, and as Mary entered Judas
stood up. She moved to where the Master was, and on him poured the
contents of the vase. Thomas sniffed delightedly, for now the room was
full of fragrance. The Master turned to her and smiled; the homage
evidently was grateful. Mary bent nearer. Thomas and Bartholomew joined in
loud praises of the aroma of the nard, and under cover of their voices she
whispered, “Rabboni, the Sanhedrim has placed a price on——”
The whisper was drowned and interrupted. Judas had shoved her away. “To
what end is this waste?” he asked; and as Mary looked in his face she saw
by the expression in it that her purpose had been divined and her warning
overheard.
“It is absurd,” he continued, with affected anger. “Ointment such as that
has a value. It might better have been saved for the poor.”
Thomas chimed in approvingly; placed in that light it was indeed an
extravagance, unnecessary too, and he looked about to his comrades for
support. Eleazer and Peter seemed inclined to view the matter differently.
A discussion would have arisen, but the Master checked it gently, as was
his wont.
“The poor are always with you, but me you cannot always have.”
As he spoke he turned to Judas with that indulgence which was to be a
heritage.
Could he _know_? Judas wondered. Had he heard what Mary said? And, the
Master’s speech continuing, he glanced at her and left the room.
The moon had mowed the stars, but the sky was visibly blue. Behind the
shoulder of Olivet he divined the silence of Jerusalem, the welcome of the
Sadducees, the joy of hate assuaged. There was but one thing now that
might deter; and as his thoughts groped through that possibility, Mary
stood at his side.
“Judas——”
He wheeled, and, catching her by the wrists, stared into her eyes.
“Is it yes?”
A shudder seized her. There was dread in it, anguish too, and both were
mortal. He had not lied, she saw, and the threat was real.
“Is it yes?” he repeated.
There may be moments that prolong, but there are others in which time no
longer is; and as Mary shrank in the blight of Judas’ stare, both felt
that the culmination of life was reached.
“No!”
The monosyllable dropped from her lips like a stone, yet even as it fell
the banner of Maccabæus unfurled and flaunted in her face; the voice of
Esther murmured, and a vision of Judith saving a nation visited her, and,
continuing, made spots on the night.
Judas had flung her from him. She reeled; the violence roused her. Who was
she to consider herself when the security of the Master was at stake? How
should it matter though she died, if he were safe?
“It is my soul you ask,” she cried. “Take it. If I had a thousand souls, I
would give each one for Him.”
But she cried to the unanswering night. Where the road curved about the
shoulder of the Mount of Olives, for one second she saw a white robe
glisten. Agonized, she called again, but there was no one now to hear.
A little later, when the followers of the Lord issued from the house, Mary
lay before the door, her eyes closed, her head in the dust. They touched
her. She had fainted.