The act of faith was not
impossible, but the act of love for the object on which that faith was
concentrated now seemed to her impossible. For her body, that remained
passive, was full of a riot, a fury of life. The flesh that had slept
was awakened and knew itself. And she could no longer feel that she
could love that which her flesh could not touch, that which could not
touch her flesh. And she said to herself, without terror, even without
regret, "I do not love, I never have loved, God."
She looked into the book:
"Unspeakable, indeed, is the sweetness of thy contemplation, which thou
bestowest on them that love thee."
The sweetness of thy contemplation! She remembered Androvsky's face
looking at her out of the heart of the sun as they met for the first
time in the blue country. In that moment she put him consciously in
the place of God, and there was nothing within her to say, "You are
committing mortal sin."
She looked into the book once more and her eyes fell upon the words
which she had read on her first morning in Beni-Mora:
"Love watcheth, and sleeping, slumbereth not. When weary it is not
tired; when straitened it is not constrained; when frightened it is
not disturbed; but like a vivid flame and a burning torch it mounteth
upwards and securely passeth through all.
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