For God is no morbid exactor: he hath no hand to bow
beneath, nor a foot, that thou shouldst kiss it."
And Chiaro held silence, and wept into her hair which covered his
face; and the salt tears that he shed ran through her hair upon his
lips; and he tasted the bitterness of shame.
Then the fair woman, that was his soul, spoke again to him, saying:
"And for this thy last purpose, and for those unprofitable truths of
thy teaching,--thine heart hath already put them away, and it needs
not that I lay my bidding upon thee. How is it that thou, a man,
wouldst say coldly to the mind what God hath said to the heart
warmly? Thy will was honest and wholesome; but look well lest this
also be folly,--to say, 'I, in doing this, do strengthen God among
men.' When at any time hath he cried unto thee, saying, 'My son, lend
me thy shoulder, for I fall?' Deemest thou that the men who enter
God's temple in malice, to the provoking of blood, and neither for
his love nor for his wrath will abate their purpose,--shall
afterwards stand with thee in the porch, midway between Him and
themselves, to give ear unto thy thin voice, which merely the fall of
their visors can drown, and to see thy hands, stretched feebly,
tremble among their swords? Give thou to God no more than he asketh
of thee; but to man also, that which is man's.
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