“It is frightfully hard to tell,” Michael continued, dreamily. “I don’t believe I can express it; it might sound so ugly. But it goes on and on, and one detail arises from another. Brother and sister--it sound so innocent. But each of the two has a body and a soul. The soul is clean, but the body is unclean. Sister--she is sacred. But it’s a woman, too, that one sees. Day and night it steals into your brooding--woman ... woman. And woman is terror, because woman is the body, and the body is fear. Without the body one could understand the world; without woman one could understand God. And until one understands God, the fear is upon one. Always the nearness of that other body that you are forced to think about. Where we lived last we all had to sleep in one room. Every evening I hid my head under the covering and held my thoughts in check. Don’t misunderstand me, please! It wasn’t anything ugly; my thoughts weren’t ugly thoughts. But there was that terrible, nameless fear.... Oh, how can I explain it? The fear of.... No, I can’t put it into words. There was Ruth, so tender and delicate. Everything about her was in direct contradiction to the idea of woman; and yet I trembled with aversion because she was one. Man as he is made and as he shows himself--ah, those are two different things. I must tell you about a dream I had--not once, but twenty times, always alike. I dreamed that a fire had broken out, and that Ruth and I had to flee quite naked down the stairs and out of the house. Ruth had to drag me along by force, or I would have rushed back right into the fire, so terrible was my shame. And I thought: ‘Ruth, that isn’t you, that mustn’t be you.’ I didn’t, in that dream, ever see her, but I knew and felt that she was naked. And she--she acted quite naturally and even smiled. ‘Dear God,’ I thought, ‘how can she smile?’ And then by day I didn’t dare look at her, and every kind glance of hers reminded me of my sin. But why do I tell you all that--why? It makes me feel so defiled, so unspeakably defiled.” “No, Michael, go on,” Christian said, gently and calmly. “Don’t be afraid. Tell me everything. I shall understand, or, at all events, I shall do my best to understand.” Michael looked searchingly up at Christian. His precocious features were furrowed with spiritual pain. “I sought a woman whom I might approach,” he began, after a pause. “It seemed to me that I had soiled Ruth in my mind, and that I must cleanse that soilure. I was guilty before her, and must be liberated from that guilt.” “It was a fatal delusion in which you were caught,” Christian said. “You weren’t guilty. You had painfully constructed that guilt.” He waited, but Michael said nothing. “Guilty,” Christian repeated, as though he were weighing the word in his hand. “Guilty....” His face expressed absolute doubt. “Guilty or not,” the boy persisted, “it was as I have told you. If I feel a sense of guilt, who can redeem me from it? One can only do that oneself.”