Paul also seemed to weary for a minute. The word "love" that seemed to contain all their mystical creed fell again from his lips: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; Love worketh no ill to his neighbour; Love therefore is the fulfilment of the law; and this knowing the season, that now it is high time for you to awake out of sleep."
He ceased, rose and walked to the window, drew back the curtain, and leaned out as if to cool his head. The sky was grey with dawn. From the streets below came drunken voices of men and women, singing ribald songs; and presently I heard the tramp of the armed guard. For a moment Paul leaned there.
"The night is far spent," he said, "and the day is at hand; therefore let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof."
He ceased, drew the curtain to again, and came towards me. Through his incredible ugliness there shone a majesty of power, fascinating, enchanting, wooing me with its strength and flame-like intensity. His hands were cold from the ledge of the window, and as they took mine a thrill ran through me. The other men looked at us quietly, as if they were conscious of some crisis, and of some antagonism between us. Paul looked at the manuscript upon my knees, and smiled.
"I have also thought of these things," I answered him.
"Yes; it is not the thinking of them that is strange, but what do they mean to you? What does our law mean to you? What does our mystery mean to you? Nothing. You are given over to vain imaginations, the conceits of the mind. You have no humility, no faith. Your great possessions have turned your mind. Until the blow fell upon you, you had imagined that you were secure through life. You have put your trust in perishable things, and they have fallen through your fingers like water, like dry sand. What have you left sacred in the world? Your wisdom has made a desert about you, a desert where there is no God. What have you to hope?"
It was as if he mocked me, pitied me, understood me. He made me cold toward him; and at the same time my sorrow flooded me.