Though he came in the form of an angel of light; though he came in the form of a roaring lion; though now in a more mysterious guise than either, it was the same despotic power which drove and drew.
How to battle now with this image of shadowy radiance? And, after all, why? He summed up the matter afresh. If there was not truth here it was nowhere, and only in following the truth could man be set free of his ills. Thus had taught that same Nazarene, whose spoken word of two thousand years ago was causing all the trouble; since even in the sceptical circles of modern scientific research men were to be found to follow the gleam along His trail. Across which lay Ferlie exhausted; himself hesitating above her in the knowledge that she would yield, inevitably, to the guidance of his groping hands in the dark.
He had said to her, "I see the truth of the Resurrection," and she had replied that all else followed; but she had not then meant to signify the strength for this sacrifice. And he saw, blindingly, that there might be no half-measures. The ghost of an unborn child barred the way of compromise.
Shaken with pain, mental and physical, Cyprian of the once all-satisfying ethical agnosticism called with the impotent despair which is akin to anger upon that Lover who stood between them as lovers, and who was becoming in conception unwaveringly the same as the God who brooded over the disciplined Churches.
"Why should Ferlie let them torture her?" he had asked fiercely again and again of himself in the past, and now that the power lay with him to stay the hated pressure he found himself weakly refraining instead with the question, "why should I let them torture me?"
Even if separation had spelt material death for them both, Ferlie's Church would concentrate only upon the spiritual death their life together must effect.
Had not the time really come to dismiss as out-worn sentimentality this talk of a soul's death?
His own, such as it was, and if he might barter, and gladly, for the fathomable happiness of To-day, despite that secret glimpse of wisdom imparted during his unconscious hours. But what of Ferlie's soul, such as That was, and now in his keeping—a stainless loyal Existent?
He had fought to make it see with material vision and the mastering Force had fought on his side.
Yes, she had indeed fallen, spent, in the fearful starlessness and it was his at last exultingly to lead.