Her
clear eyes filled with tears, but she shook them away. At last she
spoke: "Oh, I see the other sort of wounds! Alexander! lay hold of the
nature that will make them, too, to heal!"
"Saint Alison," he answered, "look full at what went on. Now tell me
if those are wounds easy to heal. And tell me if he were not less than
a man who pocketed the injury, who said to the injurer, 'Go in
peace!'"
She looked at him mournfully. "Is it to pocket the injury? Will not
all combine--silently, silently--to teach him at last? Less than
man--man--more than man, than to-day's appearing man?... I am not
wise. For yourself and the ring of your moment you may be judging
inevitably, rightly.... But with what will you overcome--and in
overcoming what will you overcome?"
He made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, friend, once I, too, could be
metaphysical! I cannot now."
Speech failed between them. They sat with eyes upon the garden, the
old tree, the August blue sky, but perhaps they hardly saw these. At
last she turned. She had a slender, still youthful figure, an oval,
lovely, still young face. Now there was a smile upon her lips, and in
her eyes a light deep, touching, maternal.
"Go as you will, hunt him as you will, do what you will! And he,
too--Ian! Ian and his sins. Grapes in the wine-press--wheat beneath
the flail--ore in the ardent fire, and over all the clouds of wrath!
Suffering and making to suffer--sinning and making to sin.
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