With an indescribable impulse, which he had no means of fathoming, he raised the trembling, shuddering form by the shoulders, and let it into the chair nearest the fire. The act was wholly without premeditation, but there was nothing in it that partook of the uncouth harshness of his voice. A few scalding drops crept out of her eyes on to his hands, and when he lifted her the heat of her body communicated itself to the tips of his fingers.
“Oh, why do you not speak to me with the voice with which you terrified my judges?” she moaned.
“I cannot make up my mind about you,” said Northcote calmly. “I do not know whether you are the Magdalene, or whether you are Delilah.”
“When you pleaded for my life before my judges yesterday in the court, I looked upon you as Jesus,” said the woman, pressing the tips of her fingers against the balls of her eyes.
“At that hour I felt myself to be no less. And I believe there were those among my hearers who had that hallucination too.”
“Would he have cut me into pieces when I crept to him for sanctuary?”
The young man pressed his hands to his sides. An ineffable anguish had pierced him.
“No man ever felt less like that Nazarene than do I this day,” he cried, with a face that was transfigured with terror. “A holocaust has taken place in my nature. I know that I shall never take my stand with the gods any more. Henceforward I am filled with roughness, brutality, and rage; I hate myself, I hate my species.”
“Wherefore, O my prince!”
“Am I not fallen deeper than her I redeemed from her last ignominy? Have I not prostituted a supreme talent; have I not poisoned the wells of truth?”