man reads when he dies.
During the last hour I have been unrolling it. In its scroll I found
existence a wine-shop where the guest fares so badly that he would go at
once were it not that he fears to call for the reckoning. The reckoning,
Mary, is death. I have called for it. I am about to pay. Let me tell you.
I have no excuse to offer, no forgiveness now to await. My heart was a
meadow: you made it stone. There were well-springs in it: you dried them,
Mary. When I first saw you, you were a dream fulfilled. Others had brought
echoes of life; you brought its song. It was then that I heard the Master
speak. I followed him, and tried to forget. It must be that I failed, for
when I saw you in Capharnahum my blood danced, and when you spoke I
trembled. It was love, Mary; and love, when it is not death, is life. It
was that I sought at your side. You would not listen. Innocence is a
garment. You seemed to have wrapped it about you. I tried to tear it away.
There was my fault, and this my punishment. Your right was inflexible as a
prison-door, and yet always behind it was the murmur of a mysterious
Perhaps. The others turned to me; I turned to you. I forgot again, but
this time it was my duty, my allegiance, and my faith. Mary, I loved the
Master more wholly even than I loved you. He was the Spirit; you were the
flesh. In him was the future; in you the tomb. I thought to conquer both.
While I mixed my darkness with his light, I pursued you as night pursues
the day. On the light I have cast a shadow, and to you I have brought a
blight. But, Mary, both will disappear. The one consolation I cling to now
is that belief. When I delivered him up, it was myself I betrayed, not
him. I am forever dead, and he forever living. While I bargained with the
priests and pretended that my aim was coin, when I led the levites and the
Temple-guard just here to where he stood, during all the hours since I
left you, I tried to escape from that cage we call Fate. Mary, there is
something about us higher than our will. The revenge I sought on you
forsook me before I reached the city's gate. It is the intangible that has
brought me where I am. I have sworn to you I never thought this thing
could be. I swear it now again. In carrying out the threat I made, I
thought to make you fear my hate and make him greater than he was. His
enemies, I had seen, were many. Those that had believed in him grew daily
less. In Jerusalem his miracles had ceased, and I th