He looked hard, almost fiercely into David’s eyes: dimly glowing they were, or rather their sentiment than themselves, in the shadow.... Tom’s hands hardened over David’s.... David grew aware of a faint unease that was sharp against the sweetness of his mood. Something imperceptible drew back in him: blanched. Tom felt the withdrawal: he dropped David’s hands—suddenly: almost he flung them from him. He stepped back and sat on the couch. His hands held his head so that they did not tremble. His voice came vibrant from the darkness.
“Do not listen to me, David. Though I out-talk you a thousand times, it is you who are right. I am of an old travel-weary race that has lost its gods and that has found no others. I feel you young and fresh beside me, though in our years there is no great difference. Your childhood was not full of false beliefs. You are strong now to go in search of your own dear Mystery. I have cast off false gods. But their hands were about my heart: and my heart went with them. They are indeed discarded and dead. But my heart is dead along.”
David came through the room: it seemed a cavern as he made these paltry steps to Tom. He sat beside him. Still, he was ill-at-ease. He felt so suddenly strong, and stronger than his friend. While Tom talked, it had been hard for him to master the despairing sweep of impotence over his body as his mind. Now again, coming of his strength beside his friend, he felt a chord draw him, held outside himself; so that his coming was weakness. This could not be. Surely, it was good to sit beside his friend and comfort him, to be glad of the mystic glow that touched from their two bodies and made him feel Tom’s breathing, made him feel the palpitance of Tom’s thought like a butterfly in his close-cupped hands.
Tom said: “Sitting beside me, you are sitting beside nothing.”
David was still.
“At the heart of me, David, there is an empty place. What you call my success has been a violence wrenched from me. David, have you ever walked along a country-road, taken a flower in your hand that grew beside it—pulled, hoping as you walked on to unearth it by its roots: and have you ever found in your hand a pitiful crumpled heap of petals and pollen, with the nude stalk still fast behind you in the ground?”
“I wish I could reason out how wrong you are. I suppose for you I would have to make a very clear argument. My feeling does not help you.”
“Are you sure?”
“If I am downcast, argument to prove I am all right is not the thing I want. I am different from you.”