Page:Auerbach-Spinozanovel.djvu/336

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314
SPINOZA.

"And though you had thus bound me.
My heart is not the less sound;
So thus I can yet prattle,
Far over the moorland,
Of two sweetest lovers' death-wound."

It was a varied throng. Spinoza hardly noticed it.

"Women's ways are indeed unfathomable!" he said to himself. "Did she not feel the infinite depth of that moment? Or did she act with such apparent indifference to all that had passed to hide it quickly from Cecilia? But how could she possibly do it?"

He could not go home in such agitation of mind; he crossed the street, and sat down on the steps of the chapel of St. Olave's. He looked across at Olympia's lighted windows, and often saw her shadow pass backwards and forwards until the light was extinguished. He was almost ashamed of himself, gazing at the windows of his beloved like a sentimental knight, and laughed internally as Tessala occurred to him.

"I cannot leave you, say you. I will not, I dare not leave you, I tell you; have I not pressed your coy, pure lips to mine? You are mine, mine forever. Was not my mother a Moslem, and changed to our faith? Should I have remained a Moslem if by chance I had been born such? But thy father and mother loved each other wholly and uncontrollably at first sight, and as to thee, dost thou