Gabriel’s Inferno Trilogy by Sylvain Reynard Page 0,292

it kill her to tell me that she likes my thesis? Or that I’m doing a good job?”

“Katherine will never tell you that she likes your thesis. She thinks positive feedback is patronizing. This is simply the way those old, pretentious Oxonians are.”

“You aren’t like that, Professor Emerson.”

Gabriel found himself twitching at the mere change in her tone.

“Oh, yes I am, Miss Mitchell. You’ve simply forgotten.”

“You’re sweet with me now.”

“I should hope so,” he whispered, his voice almost breaking. “But remember, you’re my lover, not my student.” He grinned wickedly. “Except in the ways of love.”

She laughed, and he found himself laughing with her.

“I finished the book you lent me, A Severe Mercy.”

“That was quick. How did you manage that?”

“I’m loneliest at night. I’ve been reading to help me fall asleep.”

“You have no reason to be lonely. Take a cab to my place. I’ll keep you company.”

Julia rolled her eyes. “Yes, Professor.”

“Okay, Miss Mitchell. So how was the book?”

“I’m not sure why Grace liked it so much.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s a romantic love story. But when they became Christians, they decided their love for each other was pagan—that they’d made idols of one another. That made me sad.”

“I’m sorry it saddened you. I haven’t read it, although Grace used to talk about it.”

“How could love be pagan, Gabriel? I don’t understand.”

“You’re asking me that question? I thought I was the pagan in this relationship.”

“You aren’t a pagan. You told me so yourself.”

He sighed thoughtfully. “So I did. You know as well as I that Dante views God as the only thing in the universe who can satisfy the longings of the soul. This is Dante’s implicit critique of Paolo and Francesca’s sin. They forego a higher good—the love of God—for the love of a human being. Of course, that’s a sin.”

“Paolo and Francesca were adulterers. They shouldn’t have fallen in love with each other in the first place.”

“That’s true. But even if they were unmarried lovers, Dante’s criticism would be the same. If they love one another to the exclusion of everything and everyone else, then their love is pagan. They’ve made idols of one another and their love. And they’re also very foolish, because no human being can ever make another human being completely happy. Human beings are far too imperfect for that.”

Julia was stunned. Although there were aspects of Gabriel’s explanation that she knew already, it truly surprised her to hear such words from his lips.

It appeared that she was a pagan about her love of Gabriel, and she hadn’t even realized it. Moreover, if he actually believed what he was saying, then he had a much less exalted view of their attachment. She was shocked.

“Julianne? Are you still there?”

She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

“It’s just a theory. It has nothing to do with us.”

He spoke the words, but the unease remained. He knew that he’d made an idol of Julianne, his Beatrice, and no denial or sophisticated rhetoric could make that truth false. Given all the time he’d spent in a twelve-step program that encouraged him to focus on a higher power and not himself, his lovers or his family, he knew better.

“So why did Grace like this book? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know,” said Gabriel. “Maybe when Richard swept her off her feet she viewed him as a savior. He married her, and they rode off into the sunset of Selinsgrove.”

“Richard is a good man,” Julia murmured.

“He is. But Richard is not a god. If Grace married him thinking that all her troubles would disappear because of his perfection, their relationship would not have lasted. She would have become disillusioned eventually, and she would have left him in order to find someone else to make her happy.

“Perhaps the reason why Richard and Grace were so happily married was because they had realistic expectations; they didn’t expect one another to meet all their needs. It would also explain why a spiritual dimension was so important to each of them.”

“Maybe you’re right. My book is a lot different from the Graham Greene novel you were reading.”

“They aren’t so different.”

“Your novel is about an affair and a man who hates God. I Wikied it.”

Gabriel resisted the urge to growl. “Don’t Wiki things, Julianne. You know that website is unreliable.”

“Yes, Professor Emerson,” she purred.

He groaned.

“Why do you think Greene’s protagonist hates God? Because his lover gave him up for God. We both read a novel about pagans, Julianne. It’s just the endings that were different.”

“I’m not sure they were so different.”

Gabriel smiled in