When the other heard that, he cried: “It is my own soul! Sell it to me, and I will give you all that I possess!”
The woman said: “Alas, I did but pay for it with a song, and I can but sell it again at its just price. How then can I be rid of it, though it cries and laments to be set free?”
The man without a soul laid his head to the woman’s breast, and heard within it the captive soul whimpering to be set free, to return to the body it had lost. “Surely,” he said, “it is my own soul! If you will sell it to me I will give you my body, which is worth less than a song from your lips.”
So, for his body, the other sold to him the soul that whimpered to be set free to return to its own place. But so soon as he received it he rose up aghast: “What have you done?” he cried, “and what is this foul thing that has possession of me? For this soul that you have given me is not my soul!”
The woman laughed and said: “Before you sold your soul into captivity it was a free soul in a free body; can you not recognize it now it comes to you from the traffic of the slave-market? So, then, your soul has the greater charity, since it recognizes and returns to you, though you have sold your body miserably into bondage!”
And thus it was that the man had to buy back, at the cost of his body, the soul which he let go for thirty pieces of silver.
(With occasional pauses imposed for effect, but without any hesitation or change in the choice of word, the ordered narrative has run its course. But in spite of the decorative form, and the decorative modulations of tone, there is an under-current of passion; and his friends, undeceived by that quiet deliberateness of speech, know that the speaker is greatly moved. And so, at the end, there is a pause while nobody speaks. At the kiosk opposite a newsboy arrives, and delivers a bundle of papers to the woman in charge. Over her is an announcement to the Englishman, in his native tongue, that his own papers are there on sale. From the restaurant comes a garçon charged with a message, and wishing to have instructions. The two, who have shared in the arrangement, exchange glances interrogatively; R.R. looks at his watch and nods. L.H. signs to the garçon who has served the aperitifs.)
R.R. Let us go in to lunch. Jerrold is not coming; he has forgotten us.
O.W. Not all of us, Robbie. He came, but he has gone again.
(They all look at him in astonishment; and, for a moment, nobody speaks. Then:)