Rita, trembling before the gleam of the eyes that had opened to her, listened anxiously. An ecstasy drifted like a cloud over her senses. He had touched her. His hands had pa.s.sed over her head as she had dreamed they might. His eyes were smiling with intimacy at her face. But he had warned her never to speak. She must not spoil it by speaking. She stood swaying before him.

"Your velvet dress," he repeated.

Her hands reached dreamily to her body. He would see now how beautiful she was. The men in the caravan had called her beautiful. But she had run from them. That was long ago. Now she would show him how the skin of her body looked, how her b.r.e.a.s.t.s made pretty curves, and how she had washed herself in the perfumes he had given her.

"Ah," murmured Mallare, his eyes filling with wonder. "How incredibly clever my madness has become! My little phantom undresses. Illusion--yet my conveniently stupid senses are deceived. But what delicious deception! See, her throat and b.r.e.a.s.t.s are white. Her body is white. I may reach out and touch the flesh of her thighs. I am as indecent as G.o.d for I have given her s.e.x. But what a plagiarist I am! My phantom is as charming and naive as an art student's copy. Still, she is not a woman and therefore not hateful. Without life, even this may be considered entertaining."

His hands moved cautiously over her body, his fingers slipping experimentally over the flesh of her b.u.t.tocks and thighs.

"Interesting," he smiled. "Like St. Anthony I create odalisques for my seduction. Ah, but there is a difference. This is mine ... mine!"

His eyes gleamed with a quick frenzy at the naked figure.

"Speak. I desire you to speak, little one. If I can believe in the illusion of flesh and eager eyes, then I can believe in the illusion of sound. Come speak. I am at the mercy of my madness. If you speak to me, little one, I will understand. My stupid senses that retain their earthly logic will be ravished at the sound of your voice. But I will chuckle at my cleverness. Tell me, are you mine? Can you say, 'I am yours'? Can you give yourself to me and deceive me with the beautiful illusion of submission? Tell me. Speak to me."

Her eyes burning toward him, Rita nodded her head.

"Yours," she whispered. "Whatever you say, I am."

"Clever, clever," Mallare muttered, "it speaks to me and I hear. It says 'yours.' I become too involved. Or perhaps this is only a dream. Of course, what else can it be? Part of me has fallen asleep and is dreaming. And because I am mad I fancy myself awake. And my senses obey me. Desire whispers to them, 'Hear voices. See flesh. Feel desire,' and like five little awkward m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts they prostrate themselves before my madness.

"But my senses are of no great interest. There is this other--this mania of possession of which pa.s.sion, compounded of all the senses, is but an unimportant fragment. I am a man with a woman inside him. I possess the secret of the hermaphroditic G.o.ds. I am complete."

Rita kneeled beside him and his hands stroked her black hair. Her face remained raised in adoration. Mallare, observing her eyes, nodded satisfactions at them.

"Who but Mallare could have done this?" he whispered aloud to her.

"Mallare, infatuated with himself, desires still a further adoration. So he creates infatuated phantoms. I am tired now. My hands are tired.

Return, little one, to the couch of my madness and sleep for a time in its shadows."

Mallare shut his eyes and his hands dropped to his side. Rita arose and smiled at him. He had spoken strangely, but his words were no longer mysteries since he had caressed her. She would lie now at his feet as she had dreamed of doing. She stretched herself out on the thick carpet.

Her childish mind fondled its unexpected memories. He had looked at her body and spoken beautiful words to it. She remembered the talk of the old ones of the caravan. A woman belongs to a man. This meant that she belonged to him. She had said, "Yours."

Her face smiled itself to sleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fourth Drawing]

[IV]

_From the Journal of Mallare dated November._

"I no longer understand myself. My thoughts stretch themselves into baffling elasticities. My brain is a labyrinth through which reason searches in vain for itself. I walk cautiously. Yet I am lost.

"To think has become like adding a continually increasing column of figures. I sit and add. The figures will add up into a finite sum and this sum will be the understanding of myself. I apply myself carefully to each figure and say, 'two and three are five. Five and seven are twelve.' But as I reach what seems an end I find more figures waiting me.

"I can no longer add up the fragments or interpret them. I must be content now to sit and wait until this part of me--my relation to myself--splinters into fragments and I become a dice box shaking with mysterious and invisible combinations.

"It is the phantom Rita that is threatening to drive me into darkness.

Since I murdered her in the street, the hallucination has become overwhelming. It is with me almost continually. When I open my eyes from sleep I find it waiting at my bed. The hallucination leaves me when I am outside, although at times a trace of it returns and I seem more to feel its presence within me than behold it with my senses.

"Yes, I am clinging desperately to these moments of objectivity which enable me to write. But even they threaten to betray me. For as I write doubts dance like macabre figures among my words. The very sentences seem to stretch themselves into ridiculous postures. And I must almost close my eyes and stumble blindly through a storm of denouements.

"I desired to create for myself a world within which I might love and hate--to be a G.o.d lost within his dream. Madness was necessary, so I embraced it. But my dream becomes the product of a Frankenstein.

She--the hallucination--is more real to my senses than am I. And I can no longer control her. My senses are unfaithful to me. They philander clownishly with this mirage of my thought. Then what is there left? I.

This grim figure stumbling with his head down through a storm of denouements. I persist--an unwelcome visitor, a bargain-hunting tourist in Bedlam. I remain.

"But it is a boast that laughs back at me. For I will soon be a little plaything of my phantom. Last night I walked until I thought I had rid myself. Her eyes alone lingered. Her hands moved like slow dancers. But I walked and said to myself, 'I am tired of nonsense. I am tired of this monotonous hallucination. At least let me be unfaithful to my dream since I am the G.o.d who created it.'

"I walked to the street where a month ago she had followed me under the arc lamp. It was cold and I grew tired. I came back to sleep. 'Gone, she is gone,' I whispered to myself. The room appeared empty. I was cautious, knowing the ruses of this thing in my mind. For my madness and I are no longer friends. My madness hides for me and plays tricks.

"But she returned. I smiled at her. It is folly to grow angry with one's own hallucinations. That would be a double madness. As she stood before me, my treacherous senses leaped to their sterile feast. And I smiled.

"'My egoism has betrayed me,' I reasoned. 'The love that gleams from the eyes of this hallucination is the invention of my egoism. Alas, I love myself too much, for the pa.s.sion for Mallare with which my madness endows this illusion of a woman, threatens me. My senses have already abandoned me. They no longer obey the direction of my will. And I must stand like a scold, laughing and sneering at them as they yield themselves to her. She is more powerful, therefore, than I, even though her existence is no more than a shadow cast in front of my eyes.'

"I reasoned in this fashion and continued to smile. It would be best, perhaps, to humor her. Who knows but even hallucinations are subject to wiles and coquetry. A disturbing fancy, this--one of the distortions that insist upon raising their mocking heads from the midst of my cautious sentences.

"She came and knelt beside me and I shook my head at her. She was dressed in a gown I had never seen before. It was red. I spoke aloud and said--

"'See, how abominably clever I am. My madness is a jack of all trades.

It makes new dresses for its phantoms. It arranges their coiffures. It even puts rouge on their cheeks.'

"But as I talked her hands reached out to me. To look into her eyes that are always alive with flames is to succ.u.mb. For then I find myself dreaming my dream is not a dream. My senses clamor that I join them.

"'Forget. Forget,' they whisper, 'come with us.'

"But I chose to persist. I remain. To sit in an empty wh.o.r.ehouse and m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e.... No! If this hallucination grows powerful enough to trick my senses into clownish fornications, let my madness enjoy them. Not I.

We are no longer friends, my madness and I.

"She pressed her cheek against my leg. I could feel her body trembling.

"I remained motionless and spoke to her. 'Each night you grow bolder,' I said. I am no different from other G.o.ds in that I seem to have endowed you with the instinct of profanation. But at least Eve did not turn on Jehovah with the wh.o.r.e tricks learned from His apple. There is consolation, however, in the fact that I, too, can remain indifferent.

Indifference is the wisdom of G.o.d.

"'You may play with me. Yet I know that the burn of your hand on my body is an absurdity, of interest only to my idiot senses. My arms reach out to embrace you. Your b.r.e.a.s.t.s surprise my fingers. Come, sit in my lap if you wish. No, I would rather enjoy you as before--standing before me naked. Take off your clothes.'

"While I talked she clung to me. Her lips pa.s.sed kisses over my face. I continued, however, to observe; to remain a spectator. She removed her clothes, tearing them from her body and laughing. And standing before me naked but for her black silk stockings and red slippers, she held out her arms. But I shook my head and smiled.

"'I am the victim of an overwhelming desire to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e,' I said to her, 'since I find it difficult to resist you. But if I yield to the mysterious reality you have a.s.sumed I will become too grotesque for my vanity to tolerate. I will remain aware while possessing you that my p.e.n.i.s is beating a ludicrous tattoo on a sofa cushion. I choose rather to emulate the pride of St. Anthony, who shrewdly refused to play the wh.o.r.emonger with shadows.'

"I smiled at her and she laughed. She crouched on her feet staring up at me. Raising my eyes from her, I saw Goliath. He was standing in the curtains of his room, watching me with a curious, open-mouthed fury. I saw that the little monster was beginning to understand that I was mad, and this irritated me. There was danger in him, since even through his stupid head must have pa.s.sed a wonder of what had happened to Rita.

"I frowned at Goliath and his head rolled frightenedly on his heavy shoulders.