I
wonder what you would do in such a case?'
He looked at me and said, 'As it is evident that we are going to be
intimate friends, I may as well confess to you at once that I am a
mystic.'
'When did you become so?'
'When? Ask any man who has passionately loved a woman and lost her;
ask him at what moment mysticism was forced upon him--at what moment
he felt that he must either accept a spiritualistic theory of the
universe or go mad; ask him this, and he will tell you that it was at
that moment when he first looked upon her as she lay dead, with
Corruption's foul fingers waiting to soil and stain. What are you
going to do with the cross?'
'Lock it up as safely as I can,' I said; 'what else is there to do
with it?'
He looked into my face and said, 'You are a rationalist.'
'I am.'
'You do not believe in a supernatural world?'
'My disbelief of it,' I said, 'is something more than an exercise of
the reason. It is a passion, an angry passion. But what should you do
with the cross if you were in my place?'
'Put it back in the tomb.
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