The Man Who Died by D. H. Lawrence Page A

have risen naked and branded. But if I
am naked enough for this contact, I have not died in vain. Before I was
clogged."
    He rose and went out. The night was chill and starry, and of a great
wintry splendour. "There are destinies of splendour," he said to the
night, "after all our doom of littleness and meanness and pain."
    So he went up silently to the temple, and waited in darkness against the
inner wall, looking out on a grey darkness, stars, and rims of trees. And
he said again to himself: "There are destinies of splendour, and there is
a greater power."
    So at last he saw the light of her silk lanthorn swinging, coming
intermittent between the trees, yet coming swiftly. She was alone, and
near, the light softly swishing on her mantle–hem. And he trembled with
fear and with joy, saying to himself: "I am almost more afraid of this
touch than I was of death. For I am more nakedly exposed to it."
    "I am here, Lady of Isis," he said softly out of the dark. "Ah!" she
cried, in fear also, yet in rapture. For she was given to her dream.
    She unlocked the door of the shrine, and he followed after her. Then she
latched the door shut again. The air inside was warm and close and
perfumed. The man who had died stood by the closed door and watched the
woman. She had come first to the goddess. And dim–lit, the goddess–statue
stood surging forward, a little fearsome like a great woman–presence
urging.
    The priestess did not look at him. She took off her saffron mantle and
laid it on a low couch. In the dim light she was bare–armed, in her
girdled white tunic. But she was still hiding herself away from him. He
stood back in shadow and watched her softly fan the brazier and fling on
incense. Faint clouds of sweet aroma arose on the air. She turned to the
statue in the ritual of approach, softly swaying forward with a slight
lurch, like a moored boat, tipping towards the goddess.
    He watched the strange rapt woman, and he said to himself: "I must leave
her alone in her rapture, her female mysteries." So she tipped in her
strange forward–swaying rhythm before the goddess. Then she broke into a
murmur of Greek, which he could not understand. And, as she murmured, her
swaying softly subsided, like a boat on a sea that grows still. And as he
watched her, he saw her soul in its aloneness, and its female difference.
He said to himself: "How different she is from me, how strangely
different! She is afraid of me, and my male difference. She is getting
herself naked and clear of her fear. How sensitive and softly alive she
is, with a life so different from mine! How beautiful with a soft,
strange courage, of life, so different from my courage of death! What a
beautiful thing, like the heart of a rose, like the core of a flame. She
is making herself completely penetrable. Ah! how terrible to fail her,
or to trespass on her!"
    She turned to him, her face glowing from the goddess. "You are Osiris,
aren't you?" she said naively.
    "If you will," he said.
    "Will you let Isis discover you? Will you not take off your things?"
    He looked at the woman, and lost his breath. And his wounds, and
especially the death–wound through his belly, began to cry again.
    "It has hurt so much!" he said. "You must forgive me if I am still held
back."
    But he took off his cloak and his tunic and went naked towards the idol,
his breast panting with the sudden terror of overwhelming pain, memory of
overwhelming pain, and grief too bitter.
    "They did me to death!" he said in excuse of himself, turning his face to
her for a moment.
    And she saw the ghost of the death in him as he stood there thin and
stark before her, and suddenly she was terrified, and she felt robbed.
She felt the shadow of the grey, grisly wing of death triumphant.
    "Ah, Goddess," he said to the idol in the vernacular. "I would be so glad
to live, if you would give me my clue again."
    For her again he felt desperate, faced by the demand of life, and
burdened still by his death.
    "Let me anoint