Still holding her handkerchief to her lips, she slightly shook her head.
“Even you never thought that I was bad.”
“I thought everybody was bad,” said Oldmeadow, “until they came to know that goodness doesn’t lie in themselves. The reason you angered me so was that you didn’t see you were like the rest of us. And only people capable of great goodness can know such an agony of self-recognition.”
“No,” she repeated. “Everyone is not bad like me. You know that’s not true. You know that some people, people you love—are not like that. They need no agony of recognition, for nothing could ever make them mean and cruel.”
He thought for a moment. “That’s because you expected so much more of yourself; because you’d believed so much more, and were, of course, more wrong. Your crash was so much greater because your spiritual pride was so great. And I thought you were a person a crash would do for; that there’d be nothing left of you if you came a crash. That was my mistake; for see what there is left.”
She rose to her feet. His words seemed to press her too far. “You are kind,” she said in a hurried voice. “I understand. You are so sorry. I’ve talked and talked. It’s very thoughtless of me. I must go now.”
She came and took the tray, but he put his hand on her arm, detaining her. “You’ll own you’re not bad now? You’ll own there’s something real for me to be fond of? Wait. I want you to acknowledge it, to accept it—my fondness. Don’t try to run away.”
She stood above him, holding the tray, while he kept his hold on her arm. “All I need to know,” she said, after a moment, and she did not look at him, “is that no one is ever safe—unless they always remember.”
“That’s it, of course,” said Oldmeadow gravely, “and that you must die to live; and you did die. But you live now, really, and life comes through you again. Your gift, you know, of which you were so much afraid just now, lest it had enveigled me. Don’t you see it? How can I put it for you? You had a sort of wholeness before. There must be wholeness of a sort if life is to come through; harmony of a sort, and faith. It wasn’t an illusion even then. When you were shattered you lost your gift. The light can’t shine through shattered things; and that was when you recognized that without God we are a nothingness; a nothingness and a restlessness mingled. You know. There are no words for it, though so many people have found it and tried to say it. I know, too, after a fashion. I’ve had crashes, too. But now your gift has come back, for you are whole again; built up on an entirely new principle. You see, it’s another you I am fond of. You must believe in her, too. You do believe in her. If you didn’t you could not have found your gift.”
She had stood quite still while he spoke, looking down, not at him but at the little tray between her hands, and he saw that she was near tears. Her voice was scarcely audible as she said: “Thank you.” And she made an effort over herself to add: “What you say is true.”