Indeed, all the interpretations, all the "layers," to use my sister's
phrase, slipped in by turns and lodged there for a time. They came day
and night, and though my reason denied them entrance they held their own
as by a kind of squatter's right. They stirred moods already in me, that
is, and did not introduce entirely new ones; for every mind conceals
ancestral deposits that have been cultivated in turn along the whole
line of its descent. Any day a chance shower may cause this one or that
to blossom. Thus it came to me, at any rate. After darkness the
Inquisition paced the empty corridors and set up ghastly apparatus in
the dismal halls; and once, in the library, there swept over me that
easy and delicious conviction that by confessing my wickedness I could
resume it later, since Confession is expression, and expression brings
relief and leaves one ready to accumulate again. And in such mood I felt
bitter and unforgiving towards all others who thought differently.
Another time it was a Pagan thing that assaulted me--so trivial yet oh,
so significant at the time--when I dreamed that a herd of centaurs
rolled up with a great stamping of hoofs round the house to destroy it,
and then woke to hear the horses tramping across the field below the
lawns; they neighed ominously and their noisy panting was audible as if
it were just outside my windows.
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