Suddenly he saw
himself confronted with another problem--the problem of love and
eternal conjunction between two men. Of course this was necessary--it
had been a necessity inside himself all his life--to love a man purely
and fully. Of course he had been loving Gerald all along, and all along
denying it.
He lay in the bed and wondered, whilst his friend sat beside him, lost
in brooding. Each man was gone in his own thoughts.
'You know how the old German knights used to swear a BLUTBRUDERSCHAFT,'
he said to Gerald, with quite a new happy activity in his eyes.
'Make a little wound in their arms, and rub each other's blood into the
cut?' said Gerald.
'Yes--and swear to be true to each other, of one blood, all their
lives. That is what we ought to do. No wounds, that is obsolete. But we
ought to swear to love each other, you and I, implicitly, and
perfectly, finally, without any possibility of going back on it.'
He looked at Gerald with clear, happy eyes of discovery. Gerald looked
down at him, attracted, so deeply bondaged in fascinated attraction,
that he was mistrustful, resenting the bondage, hating the attraction.
Pages:
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429