He smiled, but tolerantly and without malice.
'Eve betrays herself by the glibness of the axiom. You know nothing of truth. But I've seen truth to-night. All Paul's past life is mystery, shadow, enigma to me, but at the same time there is a central light—blinding, incandescent light—which is the fact that he suffered. Suffered so much that, a priest, he preferred the supreme sin to such suffering. Suffered so much that, a man, he preferred death to such suffering! All his natural desire for life was conquered. That irresistible instinct, that primal law, that persists even to the moment when darkness and unconsciousness overwhelm us—the fight for life, the battle to retain our birthright—all this was conquered. The instinct to escape from life became stronger than the instinct to preserve it! Isn't that profoundly illuminating?'
He paused.
'That fact sweeps, for me, like a great searchlight over an abyss of pain. The pain the man must have endured before he arrived at such a reversal of his religion and of his most primitive instinct! His world was, at the end, turned upside down. A terrifying nightmare. He took the only course. You cannot think how final death is—so final, so simple. So simple. There is no more to be said. I had no idea....'
He spoke himself with the simplicity he was trying to express. He said again, candidly, evenly, in a voice from which all the emotion had passed,—
'So simple.'
They were silent for a long time. He had forgotten her, and she was wondering whether she dared now recall him to the personal. She had listened, gratified when he attacked her, resentful when he forgot her, bored with his detachment, but wise enough to conceal both her resentment and her boredom. She had worshipped him in his anger, and had admired his good looks in the midst of his fire. She had been infinitely more interested in him than in Paul. Shocked for a moment by Paul's death, aware of the stirrings of pity, she had quickly neglected both for the sake of the living Julian.
She reviewed a procession of phrases with which she might recall his attention.
'You despise me, Julian.'
'No, I only dissociate you. You represent a different sphere. You belong to Herakleion. I love you—in your place.'