Wolkenlicht looked up, and saw a shudder pass through the frame, and
over the pale thin face of the painter. This he could not account for.
But Teufelsbürst could have explained it, for there were strange
whispers abroad, and they had reached his ear; and his philosophy was
not quite enough for them. But the laugh with which Lilith met this
frightful attempt at wit, grated dreadfully on Wolkenlicht’s feeling.
With her, too, however, a reaction seemed to follow. For, turning round
a moment after, and looking at the picture on which her father was
working, the tears rose in her eyes, and she said: “Oh! father, how like
my mother you have made me this time!” “Child!” retorted the painter
with a cold fierceness, “you have no mother. That which is gone out is
gone out. Put no name in my hearing on that which is not. Where no
substance is, how can there be a name?”
Lilith rose and left the room. Wolkenlicht now understood that Lilith
was a frozen bud, and could not blossom into a rose. But pure love lives
by faith. It loves the vaguely beheld and unrealised ideal. It dares
believe that the loved is not all that she ever seemed. It is in virtue
of this that love loves on. And it was in virtue of this, that
Wolkenlicht loved Lilith yet more after he discovered what a grave of
misery her unbelief was digging for her within her own soul. For her
sake he would bear anything--bear even with calmness the torments of his
own love; he would stay on, hoping and hoping.--The text, that we know
not what a day may bring forth, is just as true of good things as of
evil things; and out of Time’s womb the facts must come.
But with the birth of this resolution to endure, his suffering abated;
his face grew more calm; his love, no less earnest, was less imperious;
and he did not look up so often from his work when Lilith was present.
The master could see that his pupil was more at ease, and that he was
making rapid progress in his art. This did not suit his designs, and he
would betake himself to his further schemes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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