MOTHER. On your knees, my son!
STRANGER. I cannot bow the knee. I cannot. Help me, God Eternal. (Pause.)
MOTHER (after a hasty prayer). Do you feel better?
STRANGER. Yes.... It was not death. It was annihilation!
MOTHER. The annihilation of the Divine. We call it spiritual death.
STRANGER. I see. (Without irony.) I begin to understand.
MOTHER. My son! You have left Jerusalem and are on the road to Damascus. Go back the same way you came. Erect a cross at every station, and stay at the seventh. For you, there are not fourteen, as for Him.
STRANGER. You speak in riddles.
MOTHER. Then go your way. Search out those to whom you have something to say. First, your wife.
STRANGER. Where is she?