... The hand of the man in black touched his again. Smokey ... flame. Warmness, red warmness, white from hallowedness. The tiny spring burst. His eyes burst out into myriad diamond stars. A sluice opened. He was all wet. His soul poured ... a pent torrent ... out: speechless whiteness.
“Something—say something, Brother! What wrestles in you? What chokes you? What do you see?”
“Christ!” gasped Harry Rowland Luve: then he slept.
* * *
Mrs. Luve leaned back in her chair, took the brimming words of Samson Brenner.
They poured from him, free, full, into the dark pool of her eyes. They poured bright, candid: in the dark pool they fell dark.
—You talk of your fears and your pains: you talk of your loves and your dreams. You are a Jew, you are true. Why is the word Christ never in your mouth?
—O there is reason, deep! What is the pain of nearness—you pampered Jew, you Jew-boy, plump about sorrow—that blots the word Christ from your mouth?
“Mrs. Luve, I forget myself. I talk. I lose myself, there sudden I am. I do not know myself, but I say ‘that is me!’”—Pampered boy. “I talk and talk. God knows of what and why. Mrs. Luve, do I bore you?”
“You move along a path that is mine. Go on. I have no earthly thing to do but hear you.”