THERE were times when the two young men sat in silence, looked at each other: and Tom was depressed and beaten by the world: he needed comfort of his friend. Then, out of the silence, David talked. A new way he had of bending low in his chair with one leg curled beneath it, the other straight out, while his arm rested on the forth-stretched knee and his palm turned upward. He would talk low then, try to give to Tom a thing he was not sure he had himself, and was not sure but that Tom had far more than he. He believed he was recalling Tom merely to his own possession.
“Think of what you have done in your life! You should think of that.”
“What have I done? What does it matter what I have done? What am I?”
“You conquered your life, you made a new one for yourself.”
“David, our deeds are not ourselves. We are what we are, not what we do. Our deeds, if anything, are what we have thrust from us. If I have done much, I am the emptier.”
“Are you not always living and being anew?”
“I am engulfed in a vicious world whose viciousness I know. I am false, David. I play dirty games, dirty tricks. I do my share of the betraying of the world, before I get my share of the thirty pieces of gold. You do not know. I have open eyes. I betray, loving loyalty: I do dark work, loving the sun.”
Tom was up from his chair. “Look at this flat!” He parted the curtains of pale lavender that subdued the room to a quiet steadfast chromatic scale. It was afternoon of Sunday. Swift and passionate the sun came in. It made the curtains tremorous with fire: it cast a radiance upon the cream-dun walls. It sang through the room, with light feet tripping the soft rug, with tawny fingers touching the books and the vases.... Tom and David sat within miracle.
Tom’s voice was dark in the sunlight.
“This rare thing,” he said, “who can purchase the sun in the city? Not your saint, not your artist and lover! Only creatures like me who serve darkness. The Law that I serve lives in shadowy dusty places. Its priests are men too crafty and bent to be honest thieves. So I have the sun. And, David, I love the sun. I hate what I must do to earn it. I am a man who can keep his love only with gold that he gains by his love’s prostitution.”