And now the Spirit shook itself with an immense agony not unlike his own, like a mirror image of his own concussion, gaped wide its mouth, shut up its own eyed, and mourned:
«Oh, please, let me go.»
At this the young Priest opened his eyes wider and gasped. He thought: But you're free. No one keeps you here!
And in that instant: «Yes!» cried the Vision. «You keep me! Please! Avert your gaze! The more you look the more I become this I am not what I seem!»
But, thought the Priest, I did not speak! My lips did not move! How does this Ghost know my mind?
«I know all you think,» said the Vision, trembling, pale, pulling back in baptistery gloom. «Every sentence, every word. I did not mean to come. I ventured into town. Suddenly I was many things to many people. I ran. They followed. I escaped here. The door was open. I entered. And then and then — oh, and then was trapped.»
No, thought the Priest.
«Yes,» mourned the Ghost. «By you.»
Slowly now, groaning under an even more terrible weight of revelation, the Priest grasped the edge of the font and pulled himself, swaying, to his feet. At last he dared force the question out:
«You are not… what you seem?»
«I am not,» said the other. «Forgive me.»
I, thought the Priest, shall go mad.
«Do not,» said the Ghost, «or I shall go down to madness with you.»
«I can't give you up, oh, dear God, now that you're here, after all these years, all my dreams, don't you see, it's asking too much. Two thousand years, a whole race of people have waited for your return! And I, I am the one who meets you, sees you ―»
«You meet only your own dream. You see only your own need. Behind all this ―» the figure touched its own robes and breast, «I am another thing.»
«What must I do!» the Priest burst out, looking now at the heavens, now at the Ghost which shuddered at his cry. «What?»
«Avert your gaze. In that moment I will be out the door and gone.»
«Just-just like that?»
«Please,» said the Man.
The Priest drew a series of breaths, shivering.
«Oh, if this moment could last for just an hour.»
«Would you kill me?»
«If you keep me, force me into this shape some little while longer, my death will be on your hands.»
The Priest bit his knuckles, and felt a convulsion of sorrow rack his bones.
«You — you are a Martian, then?»
«No more. No less.»
«And I have done this to you with my thoughts?»
«You did not mean. When you came downstairs, your old dream seized and made me over. My palms still bleed from the wounds you gave out of your secret mind.»
The Priest shook his head, dazed.
«Just a moment more… wait…»
He gazed steadily, hungrily, at the darkness where the Ghost stood out of the light. That face was beautiful. And, oh, those hands were loving and beyond all description.
The Priest nodded, a sadness in him now as if he had within the hour come back from the true Calvary. And the hour was gone. And the coals strewn dying on the sand near Galilee.
«If — if I let you go ―»
«You must, oh you must!»
«If I let you go, will you promise ―»
«What?»
«Will you promise to come back?»
«Come back?» cried the Figure in the darkness.
«Once a year, that's all I ask, come back once a year, here to this place, this font, at the same time of night ―»
«Come back…?»
«Promise! Oh, I must know this moment again. You don't know how important it is! Promise, or I won't let you go!»
«I ―»
«Say it! Swear it!»
«I promise,» said the pale Ghost in the dark. «I swear.»
«Thank you, oh thanks.»
«On what day a year from now must I return?»
The tears had begun to roll down the young Priest's face now.
He could hardly remember what he wanted to say and when he said it he could hardly hear:
«Easter, oh. God, yes, Easter, a year from now!»