“Never.”
There was a long silence. At last Milly’s voice crept through, strained and thin, feebly argumentative, the voice of a thing defeated and yet unconvinced.
“I don’t understand you, Agatha. You say it isn’t you; you say you’re only a connecting link; that you do nothing; that the Power that does it is inexhaustible; that there’s nothing it can’t do, nothing it won’t do for us, and yet you go and cut yourself off from it—deliberately, from the thing you believe to be divine.”
“I haven’t cut myself off from it.”
“You’ve cut Harding off,” said Milly. “If you refuse to hold him.”
“That wouldn’t cut him off—from It. But, Milly, holding him was bad; it wasn’t safe.”
“It saved him.”
“All the same, Milly, it wasn’t safe. The thing itself isn’t.”
“The Power? The divine thing?”
“Yes. It’s divine and it’s—it’s terrible. It does terrible things to us.”