“In that way she wouldn’t be the Thorn,” Fallows said slowly. “She would be greater power for him. Yes, Saint Paul went alone. We wouldn’t be reading him to-night—had he turned back to her.”
That hurt. Morning was no longer smiling within. “I didn’t learn women—even as a boy,” he said.
Fallows was unable to speak. He had never loved Morning as at this moment. He was tender enough to catch the strange pathos of it, which the younger man could not feel.
“You’re a natural drunkard, John,” he said presently. “You are by nature ambitious, as it is intimated Cæsar was; but you are naturally a monk, too. I say it with awe.”
“You are wrong,” Morning said with strength. “When this woman came into the room at the Armory that first day—it was as if she brought with her the better part of myself——”
“You said that same before. You were sick. You were torn by exhaustion and by that letter of mine about Reever Kennard. It was the peace and mystery a woman always brings to a sick man.... Your woman is your genius, John. Any rival will stifle and defame it. It’s the woman in a man that makes him a prophet or a great artist. Your ego is masculine; your soul is feminine. When you learn to keep the ego out of the brain, and use the soul, you will become an instrument, more or less perfect, for eternal utterances. When you achieve the union of the man and woman in you—that will be your illumination. You will have emerged into the larger consciousness. You are not so far as you think from that high noon-light. If you should take a woman in the human way, you will not achieve in this life the higher marriage, of which the union of two is but a symbol. That would be turning back, with the spiritual glory in your eyes—back to the shadow of flesh.”
“How do you know that?” Morning asked coldly.
“Because of the invisible restraints that have kept you from women so far.... I believe you are prepared to tell men something about the devils of drink and ambition—having met them?”
“It is possible.”
“I speak with the same authority.”