"No, not wicked. It is just like the devil's cunning to possess a saint and not a man of evil. The country is perishing in a fratricidal war, the fields are empty, the granaries plundered, the people's skin is black with parching hunger, the mothers cook their own children for food—and it is all his doing, the saint's. And he has done more: he has killed God. 'There is no Son,' he said. 'I am the Son.'"
"Never, never has he said that!" cried Dio, and there was such a fire in her eyes as though she, too, were possessed by Set. "'There has been no Son, but there will be'—this is what he said. Has been or will be—the whole question is in that."
"Cursed is he who says there has been no Son, said Pentaur, turning pale.
"Cursed is he who says there will be no Son," said Dio, turning pale also.
Both were silent—they understood that they had cursed each other.
He buried his face in his hands. She went up to him and, without speaking, kissed him on the head, as a mother kisses a sick child. She looked into his face and it suddenly seemed to her again that there was the seal of death upon it:
Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh,
Death is now to me like healing,
Death is now to me like refreshing rain,
Death is now to me like a home to an exile!
II
