"What do you need? You are always mysterious."
Monsalvat went on reading. Torres remained with him for a few moments and then withdrew without a word.
The doctor had been observing his friend for over a month, with constantly growing curiosity. Monsalvat's intelligence seemed to have grown sharper and deeper. He was still weak in body but his mind was keener than ever. He reasoned with irrefutable logic, and divined his opponent's arguments at a word. Torres attributed this mental fitness to mental exercise. His patient talked with no one but his host, did not go out, read very little; but all day long he was occupied in thinking and remembering, trying to interpret his past life, trying to understand the significance of the life he was then experiencing. He spent hours analyzing the persons he knew, and with extraordinary penetration. Torres was more than once overcome with amazement when Monsalvat guessed his thoughts.
"Why should you be startled?" Monsalvat asked him on a certain occasion. "What has happened is simply this. I am living from within now. Up to six months ago I lived from without, superficially; and the life I lived seemed to be the life of other people rather than my own. It was an objective, a false, a lying kind of life. Just like your own and that of nearly everyone. A materialistic kind of life, never transcending the commonplace, devoid of mystery, and of genuinely spiritual anxiety. But now my eyes are open and I begin to understand. I have analyzed myself, I have looked within; and I have discovered a great many things there that I knew nothing of. I know now what there is in me, and what parts of it are worth something, and what I must give to others. And I even begin to suspect why I am alive!"
"I knew before that...."
Torres stopped abruptly, not caring to end his sentence. He pretended to have forgotten what he wanted to say.
"Why don't you go on? Have you really forgotten what was on the tip of your tongue? Well, I know what it was. You were going to say that all that happened this past year, and the love I found, would lead me straight to ... mysticism!"
"What? No, no, not that, exactly."
But that was exactly what he had been thinking. Monsalvat knew how abhorrent to a man as orderly and normal, as submissive to society's dicta, as Torres, the word "mysticism" must be. The doctor had come to admit society's responsibility for much of the unhappiness in the world; but he had no sympathy for those heroic acts necessary to drive out injustice. He admired Monsalvat but at the same time considered his passion for redeeming others a form of insanity. According to Torres a normal man should accept things as they are. The rebel, he who at sight of the suffering of life's victims, breaks out into indignant accusations or takes up some useless but heroic work, was, in his estimation, a madman.