“Dressed so, like the great picture, and with my fingers drawing or slackening cords that made the blue mantle to wave and lights to brighten. Oh, God—oh, God!”
“It is so, yet they brighten.”
She leaned against the wall, clasping her hands above her forehead. “Through wickedness and mire and hell and silly paradises I could come at times to her garden gate and feel her within, though ever was a fence between us! Her the Blessed, Her the Mother, Mother of All! A sweet song of her, a bright picture of her is that one who moved in Bethlehem and went down into Egypt and came back to Nazareth! A little song, a little story of her is the great picture in Silver Cross. All songs and all stories have her in them! But what I did, because I thought I was in danger and because there was mire in me, was to choose to clip the gold coin and take it from where it was needed and buy perdition with it! I chose to lie and cheat, to mock and perjure, to make her small and ugly—Her the Blissful, Her the Wholly Pure, Her the Strong and Beautiful!”
Richard Englefield turned to the window. Fiery light! The moon on the coasts of Italy! Fiery light!
Moments dropped, far apart, slowly, one after the other. Morgen Fay spoke again, in a changed tone. “I am not going back to the old life. To please myself I learned to make lace and I can make it rarely. There is here a guild of sewing women and lace-makers. A sailor’s wife told me.”
“Work if you will, Morgen. But do you lodge here!”
“Why—why?”
They moved. Light seemed to pour over them, red light. A horn was blown in the street. Again she cried out. “It is heaven that you love and seek, far above this and all sinning! When I was ape I saw that, the light falling on your face!”
“Heaven, yes—heaven grown small maybe, but heaven that man understands! Give me heaven!”