Had you told
me that the cross had been taken from your father's tomb I should no
doubt have connected it with the cry of 'Father' which had, I knew,
several times been uttered in Wilderspin's studio by the model in her
paroxysms, and I should have earlier done what I was destined to
do--I should earlier have brought you together. From sympathy that
sprang from a deep experience I knew you better than you knew
yourself. When I learnt from Sinfi Lovell that you had fulfilled
my prophecy I did not laugh. Tears rather than laughter would have
been more in my mood, for I realised the martyrdom you must have
suffered before you were impelled to do it. I knew how you must
have been driven by sorrow--driven against all the mental methods
and traditions of your life--into the arms of supernaturalism.
But you were simply doing what Hamlet would have done in such
circumstances--what Macbeth would have done, and what he would have
done who spoke to the human heart through their voices. All men, I
believe, have Macbeth's instinct for making 'assurance doubly sure,'
and I cannot imagine the man who, entangled as you were in a net of
conflicting evidence--the evidence of the spiritual and the
evidence of the natural world--would not, if the question were that
of averting a curse from acting on a beloved mistress, have done as
you did.
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