loved me, it is impossible that I should always have been able to deceive you — sooner or later I should have had to drop the pretense (so skillful) of refinement and idealism and innocence; you would have seen me for the Caligula that I am … Somebody out in the corridor — a stewardess giggling. And a steward. Mrs. Antherton. “No — NO!” and then a little appealing laugh, ending abruptly in “M-m-m,” and then the stifled laugh again. Tompkins is kissing Mrs. Atherton. Intervene, Cynthia! This sort of thing shouldn’t be permitted on shipboard. Now it is Tompkins — I know his voice. “What did he say, eh? What did he say?…” “None of your business …” “Well, I don’t give a damn what he said — he can stick it up — the flue” … “Sh!” What’s the matter with you? This ain’t inspection time” … “No, but somebody might hear you …” Murmur murmur murmur … For God’s sake speak up! I’d like to get to the bottom of this … “and said I wasn’t going to have anything to do with him any more …” “… drunk the first twenty-four hours anyway — lying like a log in his bunk with a wet towel …” “It isn’t the first time either. Voyage before last they had to fetch him … Carter and St. Clair it was … wife … she was standing outside there looking …” Murmur murmur murmur. Pause. Have they gone, or is he kissing her again? Have to do it like this, poor devils — on the q.t., late at night. Snatches between watches under hatches … “Good night, then.” “Good night, sweet dreams.” “Cheerio.” Gone: a rustle of starched calico, muffled footsteps, and gone. The Irish girl is breathing heavily and slowly — asleep. What is she dreaming of? Pittsburgh. She is in uncle William’s house in Pittsburgh. Uncle William has grown a black beard, horrible, too long, obscenely alive. His mouth, seen through it, is unfamiliarly round and red, like a great red rose, but too opulent and fleshly, almost mucous. He sits and looks at her. Then he begins speaking harshly and says over and over again, “Thy belly is as an heap of wheat” … Yes. Everywhere this motif — everywhere. You too, Cynthia — who knows? What concupiscent preoccupations, only fleetingly conscious and perhaps obscure, do you perpetually conceal? Eunice — until once I laughed — used to tell me her dreams. She dreamed one night that she was a nun, in a convent. A fire broke out. The nuns ran into the corridors, looking for the fire, but only finding dense clouds of smoke pouring up the stairs. They ran down the stairs, and coming at length to the celler, could see through the smoke every now and then a fitful glare of flame in what appeared to be a deep hole, or arched cave, at one side of the cellar, a sort of underground entrance. The nuns dragged a garden hose down the stairs, thrust the brass nozzle into the cavern, and the fire began to go out … Darling Eunice … I wish she hadn’t got married … disappeared. “Don’t look at me like that!” she said — that was one night when we had dinner on the roof garden. We were falling in love. Blue taffeta. Those sleeves of a sort of gauze. That night she was suddenly sick in the street, and closing her eyes said, “Oh, I can’t even love you a little bit … so … sorry!” … Then the time we were standing at midnight in the dark portico of the church — the church with the angels blowing trumpets from the tower … We thought we were concealed … but Eunice murmured too much when I put my hand … and the policeman … Good God what a fright he gave us … “Move on, now! haven’t you got any better place than that?…” How delightful to remember it. I wonder if Eunice, married, lying beside her husband, thinks about me sometimes? She liked me, we were happy. But I couldn’t see her often enough. “No—” she said, “this time you mustn’t kiss me … I’m going to be married!” … MISERY. Absurd, if I could face Eunice’s departure with so much equanimity, that this about Cynthia … Different … Not much intellectual or esthetic companionship with Eunice — well-matched emotionally and physically (and her sense of humor — delicious! and her courage!), but not otherwise. My longing to see her now is largely nostalgic. Still — I was frightfully fond of her … With Cynthia — so extraordinarily at one in all things — a kind of shorthand of understanding at the very beginning … Tschunk. The lights in the corridor are off. Dark. The engines throbbing; late, the night shift of stokers; sweating like a lot of firelit demons. The shaft, all the way through the ship, gleaming, revolving — ectoplasm. Somebody coming. Faubion? Light! Must be the watchman with a flashlight. At his priestlike task — of bold intrusion … Ship, I am on a ship. Cynthia is on board, but in the first cabin. Shall I transfer to the first cabin? Money enough; just barely. But nothing left for tips and drinks and the train to London. It would look too pointed. Cynthia is on board. Incredible! Anticlimax!.. How am I going to see her? Walk boldly into the first cabin looking for her? Besides, under the circumstances, do I want to see her? It would be useless. It would be “pleasant”? Good God … After all these dreams of ships, too! Always looking for Cynthia on ships … When I get to London, I won’t dare to go and see her. No point in it. Spoiled. The whole thing spoiled. The world pulled down and wrecked. Better be like Smith and gather my rosebuds while I may … Poor old Smith! The cherub, in pink pajamas, sleeps surrounded by Faubion’s heliotrope-smelling dresses, and dreams he is dancing with chorus girls. Lottie, Flo, Hyacintha, Vyolette, Dol, Maybelle, Parthenia. They all dance frou-frouishly around him, squealing, ring around a rosy, joining hands, and Cherub Smith stands in the middle, in the grass, with his finger in his mouth, looking coy. Coo-hoo, Parthenia! I see you, Maybelle! I know it was you who slapped me, Nottie Lottie!.. There’s a corporal in the grass … Smith, impersonating a satyr, runs with a resinous torch and thrusts it under a translucent chlamys, igniting it. Parthenia is burned. Goes off flaming. Ha ha!.. Splendid old Smith … This is what it is to be homo sapiens, the laughing animal, the animal who remembers and foresees … Smith and the clairvoyant — the clairvoyant corporal springs out of the deep grass, skull-faced and hideous, and grimly pursues poor old Smith, who screams among the tombstones — Flottie, Hyacintha, Partha, Flow, Boybell, Dole, Violent. He is felled like an ox. To what green altar, oh mysterious priest? And all his crispy flanks in garlic dressed. The uses of assonance. Gloom and gleam. Birth and death. Love and live. Mingle and mangle. Fix and flux. Prick and puck. Pop and pap. Twit and tot. Point and punt. Dram and dream. So near and yet so far … What if it were at last possible to talk of