She had not much, but it pleased her to give it to him.
“Do you think,” he said to her, “that I might come and live with you in your house?”
She looked up at him with large blue eyes, that gleamed strangely.
“Now?” she said with peculiar triumph.
And he, who shrank now from triumph of any sort, his own or another’s, said:
“Not now! Later, when I am healed, and…and I am in touch with the flesh.”
The words faltered in him. And in his heart he knew he would never go to live in her house. For the flicker of triumph had gleamed in her eyes; the greed of giving. But she murmured in a humming rapture:
“Ah, you know I would give up everything to you.”
“Nay!” he said. “I didn’t ask that.”
A revulsion from all the life he had known came over him again, the great nausea of disillusion, and the spear-thrust through his bowels. He crouched under the myrtle bushes, without strength. Yet his eyes were open. And she looked at him again, and she saw that it was not the Messiah. The Messiah had not risen. The enthusiasm and the burning purity were gone, and the rapt youth. His youth was dead. This man was middle-aged and disillusioned, with a certain terrible indifference, and a resoluteness which love would never conquer. This was not the Master she had so adored, the young, flamy, unphysical exalter of her soul. This was nearer to the lovers she had known of old, but with a greater indifference to the personal issue, and a lesser susceptibility.
She was thrown out of the balance of her rapturous, anguished adoration. This risen man was the death of her dream.
“You should go now,” he said to her. “Do not touch me, I am in death. I shall come again here, on the third day. Come if you will, at dawn. And we will speak again.”
Page 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152
