“We all fashion God in our own image. It is our unfortunate weakness.”
She was getting impatient with this topic. She did not want to talk about anything but herself.
“But not his kind of a God,” she replied, a vague note of irritation in her tone. “Perhaps, after all, he is fashioning himself into the image of an old god. Would that be unusual? I really can’t tell you. I don’t know. I am only a part of the furniture in that house. I, too, have my philosophy of living.”
She paused for a question.
“Yes?” said Dreeme politely.
She stirred uneasily, and her knee, warm beneath her skirt, struck against his leg. In moving her head bent forward and the fragrance of her hair swept his face. Suddenly he was enveloped in the hot disturbing atmosphere of flesh. He wanted to rise to his feet now, to terminate this ineffectual interview, to explain to her that though she might upset his mental equilibrium by the magnetism of her body, the subtle insinuations of her mysterious eyes, and the leashed ardor so like a caged tigress that moved behind her pale flesh, he was yet aware of her cunning licentiousness that would use him for her own malicious ends. He could view her with a cold intensity from a distance now, could speculate as to her designs; yet, at the same time, he was aware that in her immediate presence she dominated him by a power that was not entirely beauty. It was this that made him uneasy and unsure of himself.
“Yes,” she said, low, husky, half-passionately. “I have my philosophy of living. It is to drink to the dregs the opportunities vouchsafed us by Time, to take advantage of that cruel gaoler, Destiny, and fool him at every turn. We are born free and we should live free. Our blood whispers messages to us and we should answer those low calls that ring in our ears if we are to vindicate ourselves to ourselves. Have you ever rested your head against a woman’s breast and heard the blood racing furiously through all its arteries? What are we put into the world for? We are the fruit of suppressed joy, are we not? It is the liberation of self for which we are ordained. There is only one way of being actually free, and that is to surmount the thousand and one petty laws and dogmas that hedge us about. We speak constantly of obligations, but what do we mean by them? Do we mean the suppression of our free instincts and the obliteration of our integrity before the selfish demands of another’s welfare and peace of mind? Is not that a slavish instinct? What is our debt to humanity but the reverse of humanity’s debt to us. There is a freedom based upon the destruction of all laws, political, religious and moral, a freedom where we may tread the earth as gods in a great tranquil equality, and it is to that freedom that I turn my face. If I am free in myself, if my thoughts and secret passions move as they please, why not this flesh which I carry travel in freedom also?”
He heard the soft sound of her breast struck sharply by her hand.
“I do not say ‘no’ to anything,” she went on. “I merely say ‘does it satisfy me and fill me for the moment?’ If it does it is good. If it does it is an end in itself. Let men and women think what they please and move about with free wills. I abolish slavery.”
It all sounded like a set speech to Dreeme, something she had written out and memorized, something that she had evolved to sap the spiritual integrity of whosoever she might meet in this mood of attack. Well, he would show her that he was adamant.
“You are an anarchist,” he said. He strove to say it lightly, to fashion it into a mere flippant rejoinder. To his chagrin he heard his own voice trembling.
“I am a woman,” she replied. “All women are anarchists at heart. The only laws they respect are the laws of their desires. I am an anarchist of the soul, of the mind, of the flesh. Nothing but the limitations of my body shall stand in my way. And through the limitations of my body I will find my own deliverance.”
She stopped at that as though expecting a sudden flood of answers on his part and her eyes were fastened upon his face. He said nothing but waited.
“I am lonely,” she murmured in a low, almost inaudible voice.
Dreeme, turning his face directly toward her, looked into her eyes. She was speaking through them, steadily, mercilessly. For a moment they stared at one another, and then Dreeme, his face flushing and his body shaking, stood up. In the moonlight so diffused and cloudy her eyes dilated like those of a tigress.
“Have I told you nothing?” she cried. “Have I said nothing to you?”
Her voice was loud and raucous, a terrible sound that caused Dreeme’s body to sway. It was as though she were lashing him with a whip.
“You have told me many things,” he answered in a trembling voice, “and most of them I did not want to hear.”
She stood up before him and put her hands upon his shoulders, the nails of her fingers pressing into his flesh.
“You coward!” she said. “You miserable coward!”
He took her hands from his shoulders, but still retained them in his own. Her hands were cold and the palms were moist.
“I am not a coward,” he answered in an uncertain voice.
She breathed deeply, a long shuddering inhalation, and then put her mouth close to his ear, her long body resting lightly against him.
“Listen!” she said in a husky whisper.
