She was silenced. His smile was over her, a hateful bitter triumph.
“That is it, precisely. Don’t you see? What will we believe, Cornelia?”
He came and lifted her out of her chair. They sat down on the couch. His hand was very gentle on hers. He kissed her.
“We are neither the old nor the new, Sister. I sometimes think we are nothing. We are not happy. We are not strong. We have no gods at all.”
“We are unhappy, Tom.”
He looked at her fiercely.
“Are we that?” he asked her. “Have we the strength to be unhappy? To remain unhappy? Oh, how I wish I could believe that!”
He was grasping both her wrists. He dropped them.
“No,” he said. “It’s a lie. We are nothing. We are not even martyrs. I with my Law—my successful rotten Law. You with your paltry, remunerative Art! We are on the way. Something is on the way, through us, perhaps, through the wilderness of life. We are they who shall fall by the wayside.”
He looked over his shoulder, out of the window. The night was a blue haze, deep and far. It was streaked with the murmur of men, with the glow of a million lights. A tremor ran through him like the pulse of blood, and came about them, seated in the room.