“A child,” he repeated firmly but with a kind of reverent gravity, “for otherwise her deepest functions are not exercised and----”
“And?” I asked, noticing the slight pause he made.
“The soul--her complete and highest self--never takes full possession of her body. It hovers outside. She misses the full, entire object of her reincarnation. The child, you see, was necessary--for her sake as well as for my own--for ours.”
Thought, speech and action--all three stood still in me. I stopped in my walk, half paralysed. I remember we sat down.
“And she,” I said at length, “knows nothing--of all this?”
“She,” he replied, “knows everything, and is content. Her mind and brain of To-day may remain unaware; but _she_--the soul now fully in her--knows all, and is content, as you shall see. She has her debt to pay as well as myself--and you.”
For a long time we sat there silent in that sweet September sunshine. The birds sang round us, the rivulet went murmuring, the branches sighed and rustled just behind us, as though no problems vexed their safe, unconscious lives. Yet to me just then they all seemed somehow to participate in this complex plot of human emotion. Nature herself in some deep fashion was involved.
No man, I realised, knows himself, nor understands the acts of which he is potentially capable, until certain conditions bring them out. We imagine we know exactly how we should act in given circumstances--until those circumstances actually arrive and dislocate all our preconceived decisions. For the “given circumstances” produce emotions before whose stress--not realised when the decisions were so lightly made--we act quite otherwise. I could have sworn, for instance, that in a case like this--incredible though its ever happening must have seemed--I should then and there have taken my departure. I should have left. I would have gone without a moment’s hesitation, and let him follow his own devices without my further assistance at any rate. I would have been furious with anyone who dared to state the contrary.
Yet it was exactly the opposite I did. The first instinct to clear out of this outrageous situation--proved impossible. It was not for her I remained; it was equally not for him; and it was assuredly not for myself in any meaning of the words. But yet I stayed. I could no more have gone away than I could have--made love to her before his eyes, or even not before his eyes. I argued, reasoned, moralised--but I stayed. It was over very soon--what there was of doubt and hesitation. While we sat there side by side upon that sunny mountain slope, I came to the clear decision that I could not go. But why, or how, I stayed is something beyond my powers to explain. Perhaps, _au fond_, it was because I believed in Julius LeVallon--believed, that is, in his innate uprightness and rectitude and nobility of soul. It was all beyond me. I could not understand. But--I had this strange belief in him. My relationship with her was, and would remain on both sides, a subconscious one--a memory. There would be no betrayal anywhere. I resolved to see it through.