He looked down with tender patience and compassion
upon the development of the woman's intrigue in the palace, through the
very flower of her crafts and guiles, to save him who had transfigured
her from the hands of the rabble and the high priests; he did not even
shrink from the inexpressibly grating note of the purified Magdalene's
final passionate tendering of her personal sacrifice to the enamoured
Pilate as the price of His freedom, and when at the last she wept at His
feet, where He was bound waiting for His cross, and wrapped them, in the
agony of her abandonment, in the hair of her head, the priest's lips
almost moved in words other than those the playwright had given his
Christ to say--words that told her he knew the height and the depth of
her sacrifice and forgave it, "Neither do I condemn thee...." In his
exultation he saw what it was to perform miracles, to remit sins. The
spark of divinity that was in him glowed to a white heat; the woman on
the stage warmed her hands at it in two consciousnesses. She was stirred
through all her artistic sense in a new and delicious way, and wakened
in some dormant part of her to a knowledge beautiful and surprising.
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