“Pistorius,” I said suddenly, in a malicious outburst which surprised and frightened even myself, “relate a dream, a real dream, one that you have had in the night. What you have just been talking about is so—so cursedly antiquarian!”
He had never heard me speak thus. With shame and terror I realized the very same moment that the arrow I had shot at him, and which had entered his heart, was taken from his own quiver—I realized that I had heard him reproach himself in an ironical tone on this very account, and that now I had maliciously turned one of his own reproaches against him like a resharpened arrow.
He felt it instantly, and was silent. I looked at him with terror in my heart and saw that he had become very pale.
After a long, heavy pause he put some wood on the fire and said quietly: “You are quite right, Sinclair. You’re a wise fellow. I will spare you all this antiquarian business.”
He spoke very quietly, but his tone told me how deeply he had been wounded. What had I done!
I was on the point of tears. I wanted to beg his pardon with all my heart, to assure him of my affection and gratitude. Moving words came into my mind—but I could not utter them. He was silent as well, and so we lay there, while the flames leaped up and then sank, and with each flame that paled fell something beautiful and fervid that ceased to glow and had vanished—never again to come back.
“I fear you have misunderstood me,” I said at last, much crushed, and with a dry, hoarse voice. The silly, senseless words came as if mechanically from my lips, as if I had been reading them out of a news sheet.
“I understood you perfectly,” said Pistorius softly. “You are quite right.” We waited. Then he continued slowly: “So far as one man can be right in his judgment of another.”
No, no, a voice inside me said, I am wrong; but I could not say anything. I knew that I had aimed my single little word at his one essential weakness. I had touched the point of which he himself was distrustful. His idea was “antiquarian.” He was a seeker, but retrogressive, he was a romantic. And suddenly I realized that it was just what he had been to me and had given me that he could not be and give to himself. He had guided me to a point on the road, beyond which he, the guide, could not go.
God knows how I could have uttered such a word! I had not meant it badly. I had had no idea it would lead to a catastrophe. I had uttered something, the import of which I did not myself realize at the moment of utterance. I had surrendered myself to a somewhat witty, somewhat malicious inspiration, and fate used it as her instrument. I had been guilty of a little thoughtlessness, crudeness, and he had accepted it as a judgment.
Oh, how much I wished then that he would have got angry, have defended himself, have shouted at me! But he did nothing. I had all that to do within myself. He would have smiled, had he been able. The fact that he could not, showed me more than anything else how hard I had hit him.
And because Pistorius took the blow from me, his presumptuous and ungrateful pupil, so quietly, because he silently agreed with me, because he recognized my word as a judgment of fate, he caused me to hate myself, he made my thoughtlessness seem a thousand times greater than it was. As I struck, I had thought to hit a strong man, capable of defending himself—now he was a meek, suffering creature, defenseless, who surrendered in silence.
We remained a long time lying before the dying fire, in which each glowing figure, each crumbling ash heap called to my memory happy, beautiful, rich hours, making my guilt and my obligation to Pistorius greater and greater. Finally I could bear it no longer. I got up and went. A long time I stood before his door, a long time I listened on the dark staircase, a long time I stood outside in front of the house, waiting to see whether perhaps he would come out to me. Then I went on, walking for hours and hours through town and suburbs, park and wood, until evening fell. At that moment I felt for the first time the mark of Cain on my forehead.
I fell to pondering and rumination. I had every intention, in thinking matters over, to accuse myself and to defend Pistorius. But all ended to the contrary. A thousand times I was ready to repent of my rash word and to withdraw it—but it had been true, nevertheless. Now I succeeded in understanding Pistorius, in building up his whole dream. This dream had been to be a priest, to proclaim a new religion, to invent new forms of exultation, of love, of worship, to set up new symbols. But this was not within his province. He lingered too long in the past, he knew too much of what had been, he knew too much of Egypt, of India, of Mithras, of Abraxas. His love was attached to ideas with which the world was already familiar. And in his inmost self he probably recognized that the new religion had to be different, that it had to spring from fresh sources and not be drawn out of collections and libraries. His office was, perhaps, to help men to find themselves, as he had done with me. But to found a new doctrine, to give new gods to the world, was not his function in life.
And at this point the realization came
