another woman! Nor is it so simple a thing as flirtation, either — it is darker and stronger than that, a deep current of mutual delight, which might easily, and might well, sweep us off our feet. We know this as we look at each other — we tacitly admit it. Between meals we always avoid each other, just as we always avoid any but the dullest banter, because we both know that to take any step whatever would be to be lost. Well! last night I was in no mood to be lost — lost in this sense. And when Mrs. Faubion — who was in a mood to be lost — touched my foot with hers under the table, I made no response, pretended that I thought it was an accident. Of course, it may have been an accident — but I sincerely doubt it. No, it was unmistakable … I rejected, then, this gay little overture from the pluralistic universe, not because it was in itself unattractive, but because — well, why, exactly? A psychologist might say that it was because my nervous system was at the moment too acutely in the state known as a “motor set”—a motor set which was directed to a woman named Cynthia. That is one way of putting it. My mandibles were poised, and pointed and ready to spring, but only in that one direction, and on receipt of that one stimulus. Mrs. Faubion, it is true, might have sprung the trap. I quite seriously entertained the thought. But I foresaw, or thought I foresaw, a more than usually swift disillusionment, followed by a horrible agony of self-reproach. She would satisfy, for the fleetingest of instants, the blind animal maw; but the mind, or soul, or whatever you like to call it, would be cheated, and being cheated would be even wretcheder than before. I do not pretend that I thought this out at the time as clearly as I think it out now for you. I merely felt the thing in an image or warm coalition of images, in a pang or an inkling of a pang, as I talked with Mrs. Faubion, withdrew my foot reluctantly, and met her somber eyes in a gaze a little too protracted. And I was saddened by it, and further and still more deeply saddened, when old father Smith confessed to me once more his amorous desire for her, and outlined for me the ugly little scheme by which he hoped to gain possession of her. A sinister and sorry little tangle! Demarest in hopeless pursuit of Cynthia, whose eyes were fixed on — whom? a captain in the Belgian army? while Smith desired Faubion, and Faubion (pour mieux s’amuser) rested her dark gaze on the absent-hearted Demarest. Why must things be like this? Why, Cynthia? I returned after a while to the smoking room, where men were singing smutty songs and telling smutty stories — where, in fact, as invariably occurs, the whole world was being reduced to its lowest common denominator — and drank whisky, meditating on these things. If only — I thought — we had some subtler medium than language, and if only we weren’t, all of us, little walled fortresses self-centered and oversensitive and so perpetually on the defensive! If only we could more freely give ourselves, more generously, without shame or stint!.. And it was out of these confused reflections, which were not so much reflections as feelings, that my peculiar experience developed, the peculiar little experience which I have approached in so roundabout a way, and of which in the end I shall have so absurdly little to tell you. For what did it amount to? Only this — that I had a kind of waking dream, one so vivid that it was almost a hallucination. A cynic would say of it that it was simply the result of whisky. But it was more than that, though I freely admit that whisky had broken down certain inhibitions and permitted to my unconscious a greater freedom. I was on the point of going to bed, when I decided to take a sniff of fresh air — up to the hurricane deck I went, therefore, disregarding once more the barriers; and there, as I stood in the marvelous darkness, alone in the world, alone with my ridiculous transitory little unhappiness, I indulged myself in a fantasy. I was then, suddenly, no longer alone. You were there, Cynthia, and so was Faubion, and so too were Smith and Silberstein. We were all there: but we were all changed. For when I first moved toward you, among the lifeboats, under the autumnal stars which seemed to gyrate slowly above us, I heard you — astonishing! — exchanging quotations from the Greek Anthology. Could it be true? It was true — all four of you had achieved a divine intimacy, a divine swiftness and beauty of mutual understanding and love, so that your four spirits swayed and chimed together in a unison, unhurried and calm, which made of the whole nocturnal universe a manifest wisdom and delight. I too participated in this gentle diapason, this tranquil sounding of the familiar notes, but my part was a timid one, less practiced, and I felt that I had not yet sufficiently passed out of myself to move as freely as you others among darknesses become luminous and uncertainties become certain. I still loved myself too much to love the world; too desperately struggled, still, to understand my own coils, and therefore, found the world obscure. But I did participate, a little, and I listened with joy. It was a miracle. These four utterly dissimilar beings, these four beings whose desires were in conflict, nevertheless understood each other perfectly, loved each other angelically, uttered one another’s thoughts and faintest feelings as readily as their own, and laughed together, gently, over their own profoundest griefs! What could I do but worship that vision? For the vision was indeed so vivid that for an instant I wholly forgot that all this excellence had come out of my own heart, and I could joyfully give myself to a pure worship. Only for an instant, alas! for abruptly the fantasy began to go wrong. A jarring note was sounded, a note of jeering corruption and hatred, then the clashing of individual will with will. As sometimes in a dream one is aware that one is dreaming, so I began to feel my own ugly idiosyncrasies which underlay each of these four beings, and to see that they were only projections of myself; and though I could continue the fantasy, and indeed was compelled to do so, I could no longer direct it; darker powers in my heart had taken command of it. The beautiful harmony which love and wisdom had achieved, and of which it seemed to me that they were about to make something final and perfect, became a nightmare in which my own lusts and hatreds shaped events swiftly toward a nauseating climax. The scene was a parody of the Crucifixion — and of a good deal else. I find it impossible to analyze completely, for a great deal of its meaning, at the end, was in the insupportable ugliness of its tone. In this horrible scene, I beheld you transfigured, Cynthia — turned into a stained-glass widow! What can have been the significance of that? Does it represent simply an effort to sublimate my love of you? Or was it — as I suspect — intended to show that this attempt as a sentimental sublimation could only partially succeed? Certainly, it presented you, or my conception of you, in a very unattractive light. Perhaps that is tantamount to saying that it presented me in a very unattractive light. I was pillorying myself for hypocrisy. Perhaps I was — or certain darker forces in me, a profounder and truer animal honesty — perhaps these were taking their revenge by wrecking this pretty dream of a “perfect communion.” Anyway, it is true that shortly before this waking dream I had been pondering the question of sublimation versus immersion. How can we possibly decide which is the better course to pursue? Shall we take the way of art, and lie, and try to make life as like the lie as we can — remold it nearer to the child’s desire — or shall we take the way of nature, and love? Love, I mean, savagely with the body!.. You can call that a quibble, if you like, replying that it is not really a question as between art and nature, but between two aspects of nature — the more primitive and the less primitive. But it makes no difference how you phrase it: the problem is there, and is insoluble. At one end savagery — at the other hypocrisy? Hypocrisy fine-branching and beautiful as coral, hypocrisy become an infinitely resourceful art? Either extreme is for us unreachable, or untenable if reached. We must struggle and fluctuate in the Limbo between — saving ourselves now and then from an art of life too fine-drawn by a bath of blood; or from an awareness and control too meager by a deliberate suppressing of our lusts, a canalization of those energies … And never, at any time, knowing exactly where we stand, what we believe in, or who we are.