APPARENTLY it did not once occur to Elias to seek a natural explanation for what had happened; and even if it had done so, I don’t believe it would have made much difference. But this, as has been said, in view of all the circumstances, was scarcely strange. The supernatural explanation had, so to speak, captured his mind by storm. With tremendous force and suddenness, it had thrust itself upon him at a moment when he was suffering the exhaustion and the debility consequent upon a violent shock; and, once in possession, it clung tenaciously, and left no foothold for a saner judgment to stand upon. Then, besides, had not the rabbi’s menaces predisposed him to accept it? And finally, there were heredity and education and mental habitude, which in such matters must surely count for much. Elias had been fancying that his inherited and sedulously cultivated superstition was dead and buried. Love, like a radiant St. George, had slain the monster. To us, wise after the fact, it is conceivable that it had but slumbered; and now again was wide awake, breathing fire and vengeance; and had given its quondam executioner such a blow as might not speedily be recovered from, if at all.

Elias, at any rate, did not doubt. He told himself that he had been on the point of committing a mortal sin, one that would have removed him forever beyond the pale of divine mercy, one that would have entailed upon him, and upon his seed after him, infinite retribution. He told himself that at the eleventh hour heaven had intervened, and saved him from his own suicidal clutch. He shuddered at the notion of the risk he had run. He was duly grateful for his deliverance. It had at first surprised him to find that his love of Christine had not survived. That which had absorbed his life, and shaped and directed his life, and been to his life what the sunlight is to the day, its vital, dominating, distinguishing principle, had vanished utterly out of his life, had melted phantom-like, and left not a shred, not a mark, not even a gap, behind, to show where, or of what substance, or of what form it had been. It was the extinguishment of a subtle, spiritual flame, which departs, so far as is determinable, nowhither—is simply swallowed up and assimilated by the inane. Three days ago, he had believed it possessed of everlasting vigor; and now, it was gone as completely as the snows of yesteryear. Death and dissolution had occurred simultaneously.—But his surprise was short-lived. On reflection, he agreed with the rabbi, that nothing else could have been expected. He adopted the rabbi’s metaphor, and said that the breath of the Lord had entered his heart, and cleansed it. He remembered how, once before, something similar had befallen, in answer to prayer. But the effects of that had been transitory. The effects of this, he thought, would be permanent. If there were the materials for melancholy here, Elias was callous to their influence.

It seemed, indeed, that not only had his love been abolished, but that his entire emotional system had sunken into a state of apathy, and become unresponsive and inactive. He knew, for example, perfectly well how Christine would suffer. The light of her youth would be quenched, and its sweetness turned to gall and wormwood. The world, that was so fair in her sight, would crumble suddenly to a wide waste of dust and ashes. An agony like fire would be kindled in her young heart, hopeless even of hope. It might perhaps, as old Redwood had said, it might perhaps kill her. But if it did not kill her, it would do worse. She would have to live, and bear it. He knew all this. He could not help knowing it. It was too big, palpable, conspicuous, to be ignored. He knew it; and he stated it clearly, completely, circumstantially, to himself. And then he wondered at his stolidity; for it woke not a throe either of compunction or of compassion. He said to himself, “Altogether aside from the personal element, from the fact that she is who she is, and that I have been her lover; altogether aside, also, from the fact that I, though helpless and irresponsible, am still the occasion of her unhappiness; and simply because she is a woman, a human being, the knowledge of her overwhelming sorrow and utter desolation, ought to move me to deepest, keenest pity.” But it did not. It did not move him to a single momentary qualm. His condition puzzled and mystified him. He could imagine no way to account for it, unless by again following the logic of the rabbi, and assuming it to be the act of God. That it was merely the torpor, the numbness, naturally resulting from the fright, and the immense physical and moral shock, he had sustained, does not appear to have suggested itself to him.

On the morning after his interview with old Redwood (on the morning, namely, of the fourth of May, 1883; date worth remembering), Elias was established at his studio-window, watching the play of sunlight and shadow upon the foliage opposite in the park, and introspecting somewhat listlessly in the direction above set forth, when there came a light tap upon his door; and............