Sometimes I flung myself into the gutter, and became defiled merely to silence the pitiless voice of nature, which is a heritage of the Evil One and the work of Satan.” She had not raised her eyes from the table, and the hieroglyphs covered half of its top. “I won’t make any promises in the name of my so-called love,” he continued, and his bowed face became a mask of pain. “I don’t know whither it will lead either me or her who elects to be mine. To be mine--that has a sound of horror, hasn’t it? All I can say is that that woman will contribute to my salvation and redeem me from torment. You may reply: ‘What have I to do with your salvation or with the torments of a lost soul?’ Very well. Let us not bring that in. But consider whether in all the world there is another man whom you can win wholly, utterly, body and soul? Every step and every breath of yours is infinitely precious to me; there is an equal life and loveliness to me in the lashes of your eyes and the hem of your garment. I am within your very body, and throb in the pulsing of your heart. There is a fear that one feels of one’s own heart-beats; and there is one that is felt of another’s. Shall I use more words? These are enough. All words are unholy, and creep on the fringe of experience.” The woman in Johanna had succumbed. A terrible curiosity had enslaved her. Because all that she was and did seemed unnatural and distorted to her, and because she was weary and sore, she let herself glide into those desperately outstretched arms. She seemed to fall into a depth where heat and glow corroded what they touched. Shattering ecstasy and crushing weariness alternated. Scenes pallid and terrible flitted by as on the screen of a cinematograph, and the hours raced to their hideous death. She wrote to her sister in Bucharest: “You’re so very near the Orient, and I’ve always been told that it is full of mighty wizards. Couldn’t you, please, use your well-tried charms to get the better of one of them, and steal from him some magic formula by virtue of which one can lose the consciousness of one’s self? Mine, you see, is quite ragged and tattered. And if I could exchange it for a nice, new, fashionable one, I’d be helped so much! I could marry a nice Jewish manufacturer and have babies and eat chocolates and flirt with the _jeunesse dorée_ and realize similar ideals. I beseech you, Clarisse, find me a wizard--young or old, it doesn’t matter. But I must have a wizard to be saved.” XX At eight o’clock in the evening Christian knocked at Ruth’s door again. No one answered. He was surprised. He knew that the key was put under the door-mat when no one was at home. He raised the mat and saw the key. Then he went back to Karen’s rooms. She seemed to be sleeping. Her face was like a piece of chalk. Her strawy hair, like a flaming helmet, contrasted in ghastly fashion with that pallor. After she had lain rigid for a while, she had undressed herself and crept back into bed.