“Hold, hold!” cried Lenorme. “I want to have your criticism. I don’t understand a word you are saying. You must make the best you can of the English.”
“I was only telling you in Scotch that I wouldn’t try the Scotch,” returned Malcolm. “Now I will try the English.—In the first place, then—but really it’s very presumptuous of me, Mr Lenorme; and it may be that I am blind to something in the picture.——”
“Go on,” said Lenorme impatiently.
“Don’t you think then, that one of the first things you would look for in a goddess would be—what shall I call it?—an air of mystery?”
“That was so much involved in the very idea of Isis, in her especially, that they said she was always veiled, and no man had ever seen her face.”
“That would greatly interfere with my notion of mystery,” said Malcolm. “There must be revelation before mystery. I take it that mystery is what lies behind revelation; that which as yet revelation has not reached. You must see something—a part of something, before you can feel any sense of mystery about it. The Isis for ever veiled is the absolutely Unknown, not the Mysterious.”
“But, you observe, the idea of the parable is different. According to that, Isis is for ever unveiling, that is, revealing herself, in her works, chiefly in the women she creates, and then chiefly in each of them to the man who loves her.”
“I see what you mean well enough; but not the less she remains the goddess, does she not?”
“Surely she does.”
“And can a goddess ever reveal all she is and has?”