Like
smoke upon a battlefield, it rolled away....
I was standing on the gravel path below the second terrace when the
familiar goblin garden danced back again, doubly grotesque now, doubly
mocking, yet, by way of contrast, almost welcome. My glimpse into the
depths was momentary, it seems, and had passed utterly away.
The common world rushed back with a sense of glad relief, yet ominous
now forever, I felt, for the knowledge of what its past had built upon.
In street, in theater, in the festivities of friends, in music-room or
playing field, even indeed in church--how could the memory of what I had
seen and felt leave its hideous trace? The very structure of my Thought,
it seemed to me, was stained.
What has been thought by others can never be obliterated until....
With a start my reverie broke and fled, scattered by a violent sound
that I recognized for the first time in my life as wholly desirable. The
returning motor meant that my hostess was back.
Yet, so urgent had been my temporary obsession, that my first
presentation of her was--well, not as I knew her now. Floating along
with a face of anguished torture I saw Mabel, a mere effigy captured by
others' thinking, pass down into those depths of fire and blood that
only just had closed beneath my feet.
Pages:
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83