ust be he!

DOMINICAN. Yes, it is he. Your son-in-law! The ways of Providence are
inscrutable. Was he heavily struck by the curse?

MOTHER. Yes. That night he slept here, and was torn from his sleep by an
unexplained power that, as he told me, turned his heart to ice....

DOMINICAN. Did he have fearful visions?

MOTHER. Yes.

DOMINICAN. And was he harried by those terrible thoughts, of which Job
says, 'When I say, my bed shall comfort me, then Thou scarest me
with dreams and terrifiest me with visions; so that my soul chooseth
strangling, and death rather than life.' That's as it should be. Did it
open his eyes?

MOTHER. Yes. But only so that his sight was blinded. For his sufferings
grew so great that he could no longer find a natural explanation for
them, and as no doctor could cure him, he began to see that he was
fighting higher conscious powers.

DOMINICAN. Powers that meant him ill, and were therefore themselves
evil. That's the usual course of things. And then?

MOTHER. He came upon books that taught him that such evil powers could
be fought.

DOMINICAN. Oh! So he looked for what's hidden, and should remain so! Did
he succeed in exorcising the spirits that chastised him?

MOTHER. He says he did. And it seems now that he can sleep again.

DOMINICAN. Yes, and he believes what he says. Yet, since he hasn't truly
accepted the love of truth, God will trouble him with great delusion, so
that he'll believe what is false.

MOTHER. The fault's his own. But he's changed my daughter: in other days
she was neither hot nor cold; but now she's on the way to becoming evil.

DOMINICAN. How do the two of them get on?

MOTHER. Half the time, happily; the other half they plague one another
like devils.

DOMINICAN. That's the way they must go. Plague one another till they
come to the Cross.

MOTHER. If they don't part again.

DOMINICAN. What? Have they done so?

MOTHER. They've left one another four times, but have always come back.
It seems as if they're chained together. It would be a good thing if
they were, for a child's on the way.

DOMINICAN. Let the child come. Children bring gifts that are refreshing
to tired souls.

MOTHER. I hope it may be so. But it looks as if this one will be an
apple of discord. They're already quarrelling over its name; they're
quarrelling over its baptism; and the mother's already jealous of her
husband's children by his first wife. He can't promise to love this
child as mu