He filled and lit his pipe before he answered her.
"If I told you you wouldn't understand. You'll come to it in time. When
you do, remember what I said to you. If you don't keep your body in hand
it's going to run away with you, like it ran away with your father into
yon barrel. See?"
"No," she said doubtfully. "Do you mean be like Aunt Janet?"
"God forbid! No, not like Aunt Janet. You'll see when you come to it,
Marcella. But remember that the nearest most of us ever get to the
perfect Trinity is a thing of shreds and patches. People don't manage
to be perfect."
"Christ?" ventured Marcella.
"No. He was brain and spirit without a body."
"Why, doctor, how about when He fasted in the wilderness--and the pain
on the cross?"
"Bodily pain is much easier to bear than bodily desire, Marcella. Your
poor father would have found it easier to be crucified than to bear his
longing for whisky. And Aunt Janet--ask her."
"She wouldn't tell me."
"No, I suppose she wouldn't. When she was young she saw a man she
wanted. And he was a man she couldn't have. Until she got dead as she is
now I expect she'd have thought crucifixion a thing easier to bear. No,
there's no one perfect. All we are, any of us, is either a soul or a
body or a brain developed at the expense of all the rest. We get great
holes torn in us, just as if wolves had been clawing at us.
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