“The coward. The mean, bloodless coward,” said Jim Grainger.
“I let you say it because I understand; it’s your relief. But he is not a coward. He is only—a saint. A saint without a saint’s perquisites. A Spinoza without a God. An imitator of Christ without a Christ. I have been thinking, thinking it all out, seeing it all, ever since.”
“Spinoza! What has he to do with it! Don’t talk rot, dear child, to comfort yourself.”
“Be patient, Jim. Perhaps I can help you. It calms one when one understands. I have been reading up all the symptoms. Listen to this, if you think that Spinoza has nothing to do with it. On the contrary, he knew all about it and would have seen very much as Gavan does.”
She took up one of the books that had been so frequently flung down by Grainger in his waiting and turned its pages while he watched her with the enduring look of a mother who humors a sick child’s foolish fancies.
“Listen to Spinoza, Jim,” she said, and he obediently bent his lowering gaze to the task. “‘When a thing is not loved, no strife arises about it; there is no pang if it perishes, no envy if another bears it away, no fear, no hate; yes, in a word, no tumult of soul. These things all come from loving that which perishes.’ And now the Imitation: ‘What canst thou see anywhere which can continue long under the sun? Thou believest, perchance, that thou shalt be satisfied, but thou wilt never be able to attain unto this. If thou shouldst see all things before thee at once, what would it be but a vain vision?’ And this: ‘Trust not thy feeling, for that which is now will be quickly changed into somewhat else.’”
Her voice, as she read on to him,—and from page to page she went, plucking for him, it seemed, their cold, white blossoms, fit flowers to lay on the grave of love,—had lost the light dryness as of withered leaves rustling. It seemed now gravely to understand, to acquiesce. A chill went over the man, as though, under his hand, he felt her, too, sliding from warm life into that place of shadows where she must be to be near the one she loved.
“Shut the books, for God’s sake, Eppie,” he said. “Don’t tell me that you’ve come to see as he has.”
She looked up at him, and now, in the dear, deep eyes, he saw all the old Eppie, the Eppie of life and battle.
“Can you think it, Jim? It’s because I see so clearly what he sees that I hate it and repudiate it and fight it with every atom of my being. It’s that hatred, that repudiation, that fight, that is life. I believe in it, I’m for it, as I never believed before, as I never was before.”