“Yes,” he continued sadly. “You too will hear: remorse is the medium through which the evil spirit takes possession.”
And again he cried out in anguish. “But I’m not superficial—I may have been wanton, but I’ve not been superficial. I wanted to give up everything, to abandon myself to whatever IT demanded, to do whatever IT directed and willed. But the terrible thing is I don’t know what abandon is. I don’t know when it’s abandon and when it’s just a case of minor calculation.
“The real abandon is not to know whether one throws oneself off a cliff or not, and not to care. But I can’t do it, because I must know, because I’m afraid if I did cast myself off, I should find that I had thrown myself off the lesser thing after all, and that,” he said in a horrified voice, “I could never outlive, I could never have faith again. And so it is that I shall never know, Emma; only children and the naïve know, and I am too sophisticated to accomplish the divine descent.”
“But you must tell me,” she said, hurriedly. “What am I to do, what am I to think? My whole future depends on that, on your answer—on knowing whether I do an injustice not to hate, not to strike, not to kill—well, you must tell me—I swear it is my life—my entire life.”
“Don’t ask me, I can’t know, I can’t tell. I who could not lead one small sheep, what could I do with a soul, and what still more could I do with you? No,” he continued, “I’m so incapable. I am so mystified. Death would be a release, but it wouldn’t settle anything. It never settles anything, it simply wipes the slate, it’s merely a way of putting the sum out of mind, yet I wish I might die. How do I know now but that everything I have thought, and said, and done, has not been false, a little abyss from which I shall crawl laughing at the evil of my own limitation.”
“But the child—what have I been telling Oscar—to love with an everlasting love——”
“That’s true,” he said.
“Kahn, listen. What have I done to him, what have I done to myself? What are we all doing here—are we all mad—or are we merely excited—overwrought, hysterical? I must know, I must know.” She took his hand and he felt her tears upon it.
“Kahn, is it an everlasting but a changing love—what kind of love is that?”
“Perhaps that’s it,” he cried, jumping up, and with a gesture tore his shirt open at the throat. “Look, I want you to see, I run upon the world with a bared breast—but never find the blade—ah, the civility of our own damnation—that’s the horror. A few years ago, surely this could not have happened. Do you know,” he said, turning his eyes all hot and burning upon her, “the most terrible thing in the world is to bare the breast and never to feel the blade enter!” He buried his face in his hands.