"No, but I have wanted to."
"Truly and with all your heart?"
"Not that way," said Johannes.
"No, for in that case you would not now be asking forgiveness. Forgiveness is already there, because insight is forgiveness."
The two disciples were silent, and looked at him thoughtfully through half-closed eyes. At last Marjon said:
"But then if we had done it we would have been forgiven all the sooner; for then we should have perceived the sooner that it was wrong."
"You would then have experienced the desire for, and the satisfaction in, the deed, and have lost the fear of it. That would have been two more fetters for you, with the power to understand reduced."
"But yet there are things which we have to do in order to know that they are wicked," said Johannes.
"Are there such things?" asked Markus. "Well, then, do them; but do not complain if the lesson is a hard one. There are children, also, who do not believe their parents when they tell them that fire will burn, and that burns are painful. And yet such children cry if they burn themselves."
"But why is it so intolerable to think that another will obtain that which we hold dear? Is that wicked?" asked Marjon.