MARK. But you’ve repented?
MICH. Most deeply. I have fasted and prayed. I have worn a hair shirt close to my skin. But my sin remains. It isn’t rooted out of my heart. I can’t get rid of its image.
MARK. Its image?
MICH. (same calm, tranquil, matter-of-fact tone). I believe that every sin has its exact physical image. That just as man is the expression of the thought of God, so our own thoughts and desires and aims, both good and bad, have somewhere or the other their exact material counterpart, their embodiment. The image of my sin is a reptile, a greyish-green reptile, with spikes, and cold eyes without lids. It’s more horrible than any creature that was ever seen. It comes and sits in my heart and watches me with those cold eyes that never shut, and never sleep, and never pity. At first it came only very seldom; these last few months it has scarcely left me day or night, only at night it’s deadlier and more distorted and weighs more upon me. It’s not fancy. Mark, I know, I know, that if I do not get rid of my sin, my hell will be to have that thing sitting beside me for ever and ever, watching me with its cold eyes. But (hopefully) I shall be rid of it after to-morrow.
MARK. My poor fellow!
SIR LYOLF (rising, coming back to MICHAEL). Michael, can’t you postpone this? Can’t it be at some other time? Not in the very hour which should be the proudest and happiest of your life?
MICH. There is no other hour, no other way. (Looks at them both, takes both their hands affectionately.) Tell me (very piteously) that you neither of you love me the less,—or at least say that you love me a little still, after what I’ve told you.
SIR LYOLF. Don’t you know?
MARK. How can you ask that?
ANDREW and ROSE appear in the transept.