“Alas, knight, that all this prudence ever comes just a little too late!”
“What could I have done better?”
“Left the little maid of Harrimai’s home free from thy enchantments and to the quiet of her people’s state.”
“But I loved thee so. That atones for all.”
“Thou thoughtst thou lovedst, but ’twas my form which fascinated thee, not my mind nor soul!” Rizpah’s face became ashen pale, her eyes had a far-off gaze and were steelly, as she began plaintively to repeat the words, “‘There were giants in the earth.... They saw the daughters of men, Adamish, that they were fair and they took them for wives of all they chose, and they bore children and it repented the Lord that He had made man, for He saw that the wickedness was great in the earth.’ Thou wast my giant-lofty. Thou stolest my heart and body. Now for a flood to punish the sin, and my tears are already its first droppings.”
“We are wed; shall we not now make the best of it? Even when into this mystic alliance unmated lives converge, they can still with wisdom extract from it at least peace. Go fervently, firmly, back to the faiths of thy girlhood; become again all thou wert, except that thou be ever mine.”
“Ah, ha! how little, after all, thou knowest of woman’s heart? Thou wouldst command it do and be; and go and come, wouldst thou? Thinkst thou, thou canst make such heart as mine wild with the strange intoxications of unholy fire, filling the brain above it with all the clouds, weird longings, doubtings and misgivings, that fume up from that fire, and then send that heart back without a compass, chart, sail or helm, to find the haven? Send it lashed by remorse part of the time, part of the time half dead to all feeling, and all the time blind, to hunt up lost creeds.”
“But God provided an ark; let us ask Him to aid us build one in a home, with happy parents and happy children. Thou readst to me, but yesterday, the Prophets’ beautiful description of a lamp burning with oil supplied from two palm trees; one on either side. I’ll interpret; the trees are parents, the lamp the light of home, manifest in posterity, reproduction; a prophecy of the resurrection.”
“Beautiful mysticism. But the giantesque men rose to play at lust, just beside Sinai of the law.”
“Not so I, the Teutonic knight, now the husband. Rizpah; thy desperate misery appeals to all my manhood. I swear to thee I’d turn my heart’s blood into the oil to cause our home to glow with the serene light of holy happiness.”