In some way, she was not afraid of him at all.
In some other way she used him as a mere magic implement,
used him with the most amazing priestess-craft.
Himself, the individual man which he was, this she
treated with an indifference that was startling to
him.
He forgot, perhaps, that this was how he had treated
her. His famous desire for her, what had it
been but this same attempt to strike a magic fire
out of her, for his own ecstasy. They were playing
the same game of fire. In him, however, there
was all the time something hard and reckless and defiant,
which stood apart. She was absolutely gone in
her own incantations. She was absolutely gone,
like a priestess utterly involved in her terrible
rites. And he was part of the ritual only, God
and victim in one. God and victim! All
the time, God and victim. When his aloof soul
realised, amid the welter of incantation, how he was
being used,—not as himself but as something
quite different —God and victim—then
he dilated with intense surprise, and his remote soul
stood up tall and knew itself alone. He didn’t
want it, not at all. He knew he was apart.
And he looked back over the whole mystery of their
love-contact. Only his soul was apart.
He was aware of the strength and beauty and godlikeness
that his breast was then to her—the magic.
But himself, he stood far off, like Moses’
sister Miriam. She would drink the one drop of
his innermost heart’s blood, and he would be
carrion. As Cleopatra killed her lovers in the
morning. Surely they knew that death was their
just climax. They had approached the climax.
Accept then.
But his soul stood apart, and could have nothing to
do with it. If he had really been tempted, he
would have gone on, and she might have had his central
heart’s blood. Yes, and thrown away the
carrion. He would have been willing.
But fatally, he was not tempted. His soul stood
apart and decided. At the bottom of his soul
he disliked her. Or if not her, then her whole
motive. Her whole life-mode. He was neither
God nor victim: neither greater nor less than
himself. His soul, in its isolation as she lay
on his breast, chose it so, with the soul’s inevitability.
So, there was no temptation.
When it was sufficiently light, he kissed her and
left her. Quietly he left the silent flat.
He had some difficulty in unfastening the various
locks and bars and catches of the massive door downstairs,
and began, in irritation and anger, to feel he was
a prisoner, that he was locked in. But suddenly
the ponderous door came loose, and he was out in the
street. The door shut heavily behind him, with
a shudder. He was out in the morning streets
of Florence.
CHAPTER XX
THE BROKEN ROD
The day was rainy. Aaron stayed indoors alone,
and copied music and slept. He felt the same
stunned, withered feeling as before, but less intensely,
less disastrously, this time. He knew now, without
argument or thought that he would never go again to
the Marchesa: not as a lover. He would
go away from it all. He did not dislike her.
But he would never see her again. A great gulf
had opened, leaving him alone on the far side.
Copyrights
Aaron's Rod from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
