SEVEN
Earth
ONE of the candles between the woman and the boy had burned faster than the other. It guttered, went out. She saw the death of Clara.... The long gray room full of the streaking stains of the white sick. Clara’s black hair and the wan sheet and the bars of the iron bed. Clara’s clasping arms, moist, shutting out life.—Let me die with you!... The fading eyes of Clara.
“You forgive me? forgive me? I should not have brought you in, O Fanny. I am glad to pay for that, I was mad! But there were six years.... I have loved you. Now, you, what are you going to do?”
“You forgive me, Clara? What becomes of any of us? I have loved you also.”
... “I murdered her. For what?... White Clara for a dirty Jew! Mangel is dead at any rate ... just dead in another place....”
“I was not sorry. Clara was dead. My friend! My world was gone. I did not feel sorrow. Walking the streets, the innumerable streets my soul was as upon a journey through numberless bodies and states of myself. Numberless moments. And yet my soul was One. It was unchanged. It moved through the broken sea of my Disaster, it knew it was One....
“It is One now. Here I am.... Four years I have been here. Susan and Tessie I never saw again. Thelma came back. Dear Thelma. She has helped me. You know how. She saved ... I can’t guess by what means ... part of my furniture from the crash of the House. She is loyal like an animal. You do well, Samson Brenner, caring even in the way you care, for Thelma....
“Four years I have been here—“