The recitation over, she waved us a salute, and a gold bracelet flashed above the elbow of her bare arm. Then she sank on to the nearest sofa, covered with carpeting of a rich pattern. She received no thanks, nor did she expect any. There she lay, her hands clasped beneath her head, and the black diamonds of her eyes gazing steadfastly up to the ceiling.
“Oh, what heavenly bliss I am beginning to feel now!” was the thought that flashed upon me all at once.
Yes, the narcotic was acting already. Everything in me that was evil, or pained, or imperfect, had vanished away. I was filled with light—a chilly splendour, supremely contemptuous of all things, supremely blissful.
The chill had spread around me. There was—in the wide-open, quiescent eyes of all those men, gazing as in a hypnotic trance upon the miracle of female beauty which they beheld—the uncanny greenish light which certain gases in slow combustion give out. We were in an atmosphere of superhuman delight; a delight that was not earthly; the sempiternally fascinating delight of Nonexistence.
There was a hearkening to the silence, and a listening with riveted and petrified attention. The least little murmur of life gave pain. No one was allowed into the studio; black coffee was poured out by Radlowski and Gina, and brought to each of us by them. And soft and low fell slowly from our lips words as of silken tissue, containing thoughts of delicate essence, recondite and shrouded in mystery.
The unknown blonde was saying to Emma:
“At such moments as these, I never give one thought to my lover. … I wish to feel no love for him, in order that I may dream of Love itself. … I see a land such as on earth there is none: where a Not-sun shines, and where Not-flowers have fragrance! A vision! … I behold a lover who is not of the earth, and him alone I love. … In a vision. … In my slumbers!”
“There is nothing in the world,” said Emma, “so beautiful as that which is not in it. … Oh, how sweet is the craving after the love that is nowhere to be found!”
We were all experiencing an extraordinary and ecstatic glow: and in our state nothing appeared too naive or too exalté.
I felt full of kindly inclination towards these people, and of deep gratitude as well, because they were all in such harmony with one another. It was almost pure ideal friendship, based on community of admirations and disdains, and mutually uniting all those of the same caste: the cool and egotistical friendship which one demigod may feel for another.
The slenderly built young man whom I have mentioned leant forward to me:
“Pray tell me something of love.”
“Love? I know one kind only.”
“And what is that?”
“The fanatical, the Pagan love of Self.”
I clasped my hands, and rested my head upon them. Looking forth into that infinite distance where all is rigid, where no motion is possible, and partly unconscious of what I was saying, I spoke thus:
“Oh! how I love myself in all my manifestations! In all my loves and abhorrences; in all my dreamings and scornings; in all those most mournful victories of my own unconquerable strength!—Ah! how willingly would I die this very night, this wonderful night of the blossoming and perishing of my desires!”
From one instant to the next, my feelings were growing stranger and stranger. Something akin to dread was now taking hold upon me. Somewhere—far, far away, as it were down at the very bottom of the gulf of Life—I heard a carriage clatter past, and a shudder of unutterable dismay then shook me. Unwittingly, I drew closer to my next neighbour. … Presently, I was aware of the soothing, almost spiritual caress of someone’s cool white hand, passing over my forehead. As I felt it stroke me so gently, my alarms were dispelled; and again I was steeped in that phosphorescent zodiacal luminosity, as of gases in slow combustion.
And now it returned, that vision, that majestic long-forgotten vision. Once more I saw around me the endless stretches of the icy plains. The sun was not seen in the jet-black sky; and above the horizon rose the cold greenish glimmer of the Northern Lights. And lo, those cold dead dreams of mine had come to life again!
There is no more any Ego of mine. … I am beyond existence and beyond nothingness—in that world wherein dies the immemorial conflict between dream and vigil, where Wrong, robed in her queenly purple, is no longer shadowed by Vengeance, attired in pallid green; where stony Hatred no longer hugs in her fierce embrace the weeping god of love; where the marble statue of Pride no more does homage to the grim spectre, Fear; wherein there are no more wretched victories, nor the portentous delights of worshipping Self and the Power of Self!
And I am in such bliss—bliss so celestial, so divine!
That?—Oh, that? … It has passed away. Only … from time to time. …
Yes, from time to time, I cast away all traces of kisses in the Past—put aside my wreath of purple velvet flowers—and go, walking tranquilly and slowly, by the cold light of the moon, to kneel at the grave where my dreams lie buried, and press my brow to the base of the tombstone that covers them, … and muse.
Once, I hung up a wreath of snow-white lilies there; now, I do so no more. I never carry any flowers to that tomb now.
Nor do I ever strive to roll away the grey stone from the sepulcher—that stone, with its black fretwork of ferns graven upon it of old.
Then I go home, and again array myself in my purple velvet flowers. …
Fragrance, beyond words, wild and fatal perfume of withered roses! Sweet, most sweet and ardent lips—lips now lost forever! … Ah, that houri, with arms like pale dead gold!
All this—I can no longer say whether it was a dream or not. …
Ah! but what is this? Have the cool white lilies blossomed once again in my deserted
