“There is God,” he said, “May he bless you.”
“What does that mean ... if He blesses?”
“The Jews in three thousand bloody years have not found out.”
“I tell you I do not love you: I tell you and you bless me.”
“I reverence you, Fanny. You are clear like water. Love is a word I have not won the use of.”
“What have you done to me!”
“You are water, Frances. You were muddied and thick. You can look down, now, through the clearness of yourself, to the dirt base of yourself....”
“ ...to Harry!”
“See him clear, through your own clean-ness.”
“You are strong. O how strong you are, you man who have won for yourself a power in the world that hates you. Your people have been beaten bloody: always, always. Beaten bloody by their God ... beaten bloody by the world to which they gave their God. They are a bent dark people. Yet you have won for yourself a body fair to see. Never shall I forget your lovely body. Yet I do not love you. I love a man who had all and who cast it away: who was fair as you were never and who has dirtied himself.”