Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/351

 not be here—the boy will be alone—and then"—Reutler burst into a strangled sobbing, "My life will no longer protect his, if I die tomorrow; nothing, nothing will protect this creature beside me." Reutler went on, as if now not quite sure of what he was saying, very softly, almost as if fearfully: "Lord, you are not a physician, no, for it is you have created all the diseases, all the nervous ills of humanity. You cannot know what things prowl around this being so dear to me, who has no other defender than the slave that I have made myself." Reutler clenched his fists. "Speak then!—come!—manifest yourself to me Lord! I swear that ten years of torture such as I have undergone, without complaint, they ought perhaps to be reason enough for such a miracle!—Lord, I do not quite.know any longer what I am saying; and that means that I am sure to be saying what is true! Yes—yes—you are a doctor! Just think of it. For, you sent an angel, once on a time, to one of your servants—to an imbecile, he was!—to let him know that the gall of a fish was a sovereign cure for an inflammation of the eyelids. Don't you remember it? I am an intelligent man, worth the, trouble of your sending some sort of a messenger who will show me how I can preserve my eyes from the horrible vision of my brother here, my child, alone in the world, at the mercy of—brutes! Lord, my Will was strong enough for matters yesterday; but—but—to-morrow, escaped from the bullet-hole in my breast, whither is to go my Will? Can you promise me that if I am not here my soul, my breath, will envelop by their protection this human creature beside me? My Will! Why, it is strong enough to sot before your face the most monstrous of men, the most dreadful of enemies for you, another Satan—one who will end by honouring himself just because he is a Satan—one that shall find himself more God than are you! Are you daring to make so much of a plaything out of me that you will even turn me into your accomplice? Lord, I am crying out to you because my very pride is so great that it can turn for help only to God! Since you have dazzled, blinded me, by a superhuman temptation, make me your equal, Lord!—if you mean that I am to resist!

On his knees, Reutler pressed nearer to the bed on which the Byzantine Princess still lay, stretched out, as if on a monument. She ' had just let her left arm slip downward; and her hand shone near to the very lips of the unhappy Reutler. It was an extremely beautiful hand, that hand of a boy; long, narrow, tapering at the extremities; so much the hand of a woman, as Paul -Eric lay there, in that heavy sleep after the fatigues of the night-long ball. Reutler looked at the hand, in dread.

"No," said he, "that is not the hand of my brother! I do not