“No, Ninzian, I simply cannot stand having a husband who walks like a bird, and is liable to be detected the next time it rains. It would be on my mind day and night, and people would say all sorts of things. No, Ninzian, it is quite out of the question. I will get your things together at once, and you can go to hell or over to that giggling ill-bred friend of yours at the pawnbroker’s nasty shop, just as you elect: and I leave it to your conscience if, after the way I have worked and slaved for you, you had the right to play this wrong and treachery upon me.”
And Balthis said also: “For it is a great wrong and treachery which you have played upon me, Ninzian of Yair, getting from me such love as men will not find the equal of in any of the noble places of this world until the end of life and time. This is a deep wound that you have given me. Upon your lips were wisdom and pleasant talking, there was kindliness in the gray eyes of Ninzian of Yair, your hands were strong at sword-play, and you were the most generous of companions all through the daytime and in the nighttime too. These things I delighted in, these things I regarded: I did not think of the low mire, I could not see what horrible markings your passing by had left to this side and to that side.”
Then Balthis said: “Let every woman weep with me, for I now know that to every woman’s loving is this end appointed. There is no woman that gives all to any man, but that woman is wasting her substance at bed and board with a greedy stranger, and there is no wife who escapes the bitter hour in which that knowledge smites her. So now let us touch hands, and now let our lips too part friendlily, because our bodies have so long been friends, the while that we knew nothing of each other, Ninzian of Yair, on account of the great wrong and treachery which you have played upon me.”
Thus speaking, Balthis kissed him. Then she went into the house that was no longer Ninzian’s home.
52.
Remorse of a Poor Devil
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NINZIAN sat on a stone bench which was carved at each end with a crouching sphinx, and he waited there while the sunlight died away behind the poplars. The moment could not but seem to anybody pregnant with all danger. Holmendis was coming, and Holmendis would very soon be hearing the confession of Balthis, and these saints were over-often the prey of an excitability which damaged their cause.
That impetuous Holmendis was quite as apt as not to resort out of hand to unbridled miracle-working, and with the fires of Heaven to annihilate his leading fellow laborer in every exercise of altruistic intermeddling,—without pausing, rationally, to reflect what an annihilation the resultant scandal would be to Holmendis’ own party of reform and uplift. Holmendis would no doubt be sorry afterward: but he would get no sympathy from Ninzian.
And, meanwhile, Ninzian loved his wife so greatly that prolonged existence without her did not tempt him. His wife, whoever she might be, had always seemed peculiarly dear to Ninzian. And now, as he looked back upon the exceeding love which he had borne his wife, in Nineveh and Thebes and Tyre and Babylon and Rome and Byzantium, and in all other cities that bred fine women, and as he weighed the evanescence of this love which was evading him after these few thousand years, it seemed to Ninzian a pitiable thing that his season of earthly contentment should thus be cut off in its flower and withered untimelily.