Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/44

32 toe by 'creeping an inch nearer and laying her hands upon his feet.' Instantly he seems to perceive his opportunity for a few final inflictions which she shall be sore with for many a day. Do not think, he says, that I came here on purpose to kick you in this way: he did not come to 'urge her crime,' or 'curse' her. Why, his vast pity for her in that painfully horizontal attitude 'almost makes him die,' seeing that it causes her to lay 'her golden head, his pride in other summers, at his feet' in the dirt and dust. It is merely that he'd been weighing her heart with another heart (which shall be nameless)—his heart which was 'too wholly true to dream untruth in thee.' In a word, he 'forgives her as Eternal God forgives.' Then he is ready for business, and it is with a sublime unction that he proceeds to inform her that he can't kiss her (her lips are Lancelot's), can't even touch her, for her hand is flesh, and his flesh, his too too unsolid and unmeltable flesh, as he looks down on her 'polluted' flesh, cries out, 'I loathe thee!' For she must never forget, you see, that he was 'ever virgin save for her.' However, if she purifies herself, and macerates herself, and recognises sufficiently that 'he is her husband, not a smaller soul, not Lancelot nor another,' then perhaps God may allow her to shake hands with him in heaven, and (it may even be) to kiss him; but henceforth it is all over: she