Undulantly she disengaged and freed herself. She stooped for her jacket, and when she stood up again there was no sign of vacillation in her face. The back of her hand she drew across her lips, but whether to brush away the kiss that had been placed on them, or the smile that hovered in their moisture, Gonfallon was unable to decide. She had retreated a little, and he made a step to her, but as he moved she retreated yet farther away.
“Claire—” he murmured.
“Oh, I say, Chris,” she interrupted, “drop all that.” The curtain parted, and she had gone.
In a second he was in the hall, but already she had reached the floor above, and, foreseeing the futility of pursuit, he entered his study and threw himself on a chair.
For a while he sat palpitant in alternations of elation and remorse. His path, doubtless, was straight, but it was by no means clear. The mystic penumbra of accepted tenets was still about him, yet through them shone the wonder of landscapes undivined. He was as one who awakes at dawn and finds the night still there. And as he alternately detained and dismissed now elation, now regret, he was aware of that confusion of purpose which visits those that puzzle over a problem they are in haste to solve. The signification of his own attitude was that which stirred him most. At the moment it seemed to him impossible that he should have acted to the girl as he had, and not impossible alone, but cowardly as well. Of the two, was not he the stronger? was it not for him to guide, to protect her, if need be, even from herself? And yet, without even the excuse of celibacy, without receiving from her so much of an invitation as can be conveyed in the quiver of an eyelid, he had performed the most ignoble role that man can play. Had it been love that had impelled him, some excuse might there be. But it was not that. Love would have slit his lips to the ears rather than let him touch her own. There would have been no elation then, no remorse, only an abandonment in spirit, the escape of a dream that might have come true, and then oblivion which is the novitiate of death. But no; it was not that. He needed no one to prompt him that in his heart were none of those choirs which love awakes; not a hymn had been summoned, not a harmony evoked. No, it was not that; it was the beast that is in us all, lashed down, kept cowering and hidden in the deepest cavern of our being, till in the inadvertent moment it leaps into light and claims its prey at last.
Through the silence of the house he heard a door open and another shut. From above, overhead, came the faint fall of moving feet. She had left Ruth, he knew; she had gone to her room. Now she had latched the door; now she was at the window, he heard the shutters close. The footfalls seemed to cross the room, and for the moment he pictured her standing as he had seen her once, before the glass, her arms raised, the fingers interlocked behind her head. What was it, after all, he wondered, that had impressed him so? It was not the refinement of her nature: there were times when he thought her almost coarse. Her mind was a rendezvous of platitudes; and as for her beauty, he could have sent a prayerbook skimming from the pulpit and in whatever aisle of Gethsemane it chanced to fall would be a girl fairer, more feminine, more appetizing yet, than she. But would there, though?
An almost imperceptible footfall from the room above aroused him from his revery. The sound was fainter than before; the feet that stirred were unshod, stockingless perhaps. Their faint tinkle ushered a fresh vision into the chambers of his mind: he saw her in a fabric so delicate of texture that it could be drawn through a ring, a garment immaterial as a moonbeam, her neck uncovered, and about her half-closed eyes and red moist lips the subtle smile of a faun.
In anger at himself he sprang to his feet. On the table before him was a heap of the manufactures of rationalist, of sophist, and of sage. Every one of those who have taken the nimbus from a god and pointed to an eternal grave had left a textbook there. For some time they had been accumulating on back bookshelves; but the day before, with some sermon in view, he had got them within reach. It is good to be valiant in the pulpit, it is good to confute; and the privilege of demolishing any doctrine that conflicts with Christianity, particularly when there is not the slightest danger of being answered back, is a pleasure in itself. But each time Gonfallon had handled a materialist, zest in his own creed declined. An Englishman, Clifford, who described the universe as an immense Sir Roger de Coverley, in which the dancers were atoms and the ballroom space, had the power to take him into an abyss so dank that the candle of faith was snuffed. A Frenchman, Flavet, had shown him the provenance of the parables. In Assyro-Accadian myth, Schrader, a German, had
