“Be strong. They lean on you. No, I mean I lean on you. The letters and the pictures—destroy them. Yes, Gunther and I had von in our names—but no soul—just youth and love——”
He went to the stove, lifted the lid, and tossed in the letters and the old case. As he was putting the lid on again he could see the case shrivelling, and the flame with its black base crawling over sheets closely written in a clear, beautiful foreign handwriting.
“They are destroyed, Aunt Albertina. Is that all?”
“All. No religion—not to-day, I thank you. Yes, you are strong—but no soul, only a body.”
He went out and sent the two women. He expanded his lungs to the tainted air of Orchard Street. It seemed fresh and pure to him. “Horrible!” he thought, “I shall soon be out of all this——”
Out of it? He stopped short in the street and looked wildly around. Out of it? Out of what?—out of life? If not, how could he escape responsibility, and consequences? Consequences! He strode along, the children toddling or crawling swiftly aside to escape his tread. And as he strode the word “Consequences!” clanged and banged against the walls of his brain like the clapper of a mighty bell.
At the steps of his house a woman and a man tried to halt him. He brushed them aside, went up the steps two at a time, let himself in, and shut himself in his study.
Why had he not seen it before? To shiver with the lightning of lust the great tree of the church, the shelter and hope of these people; to tempt fate to vengeance not upon himself, but upon Emily; to cover his children with shame; to come to her, a wreck, a ruin; to hang a millstone about her neck and bid her swim!—“And I called this—love!”
At eight o’clock that evening Emily sat waiting for him. “Shall I hate him as soon as I see him? Or shall I love him so that I’ll not care for shame or sin?” The bell rang and she started up, trembling. The maid was already at the front door.