Yes, yes, it is true, it is true and it was always true.... I did not know it, I searched my heart in vain and I was ignorant of all my feelings until these days of anguish.... I refused to see that you were coming towards me and that everything was awaiting you.... And yet I ought to have known it.... Already, at Antioch, do you remember, Verus, how I avoided you?... I received so many others; and you alone, the comeliest, the purest, I tried to ignore, to blot out, to destroy.... As soon as you appeared, I withdrew, like a shy and distrustful animal, to my lair; and, only the other day, at our good Silanus’, I felt all the evil, all the cruelty, or all the despair that fills my heart rise to my lips.... But, to-day, I see; I am no longer the same; I no longer know myself, because I am myself once more.... All that used to resist is broken within my soul.... I no longer understand myself and I did not know that happiness is so strange a thing.... I, who never wept in my worst moments of distress, am sobbing to-day when happiness awaits me.... I am glad and light-hearted and yet more shattered than if all the misfortunes that hover in the skies were about to burst over me.... (_Embracing him more passionately_) Help me, my Verus, help me, support me, you whom nothing threatens, you who have nothing to fear!... VERUS But what has happened? Can any one have dared, in my absence...? MARY MAGDALENE No, no, nobody; and it is not that; and I myself do not know the danger that surrounds me.... But I have no other shelter than your arms; and I feel myself lost if I lose you too.... Take me, bear me away on that heart to which I am listening, far from myself, far from this place and from my anxiety.... You alone can save me and I have no life but that which you give me.... But why did you forsake me so long in my tears, why did you not come until after the third day, abandoning me thus, without a word of pity, without a sign of hope?... VERUS You are mistaken, Magdalene, or else your slaves did not acquaint you with the truth.... The very day after our meeting at Silanus’, I came to Bethany to tell you that, by order of the Procurator, I was suddenly sent, at the head of a cohort, to suppress a curious riot that had broken out near Jericho. The slaves who keep your door would not allow me to approach you and replied to me in such a way that I dared not well insist.... I understood that they were obeying orders so precise and so stern that I must not try to thwart them.... MARY MAGDALENE It is true.... I forgot.... I was mad and worn out, incapable of seeing, willing or hearing.... I was not yet awake.... It seemed to me that I was still struggling amid the hideous crowd in Simon’s garden, where I called in vain upon him who had delivered me.... He was abandoning me, he too.... I sent in search of him to no purpose. No one could tell me where he was hiding.... Have you not seen him since?... Do you not know where he is?... VERUS