not an infidelity for me to love Eunice and Helen at the same time! It is not!.. No man can serve both God and Mammon, William. — The distinction is utterly false! If I find something precious in Helen to adore, and at the same moment find something equally precious in Eunice to love, and if both of them love me — then what academic puritanism or pedantic pietistic folly can that be which would pronounce it wrong? NO! It is not wrong. It is only that we are taught to believe it so that makes it appear so. It is true that I was furtive, that I concealed from Eunice my knowledge of Helen — but why? Only because I wanted to spare Eunice, — who perhaps believed (though I never tried to make her do so) that she possessed me wholly, — the pain of disillusionment, the pain of jealousy. Good God, how much I would have preferred to be frank! I hated the necessity for concealment … It is only the necessity for concealment which introduces ugliness; the thing itself is no less, and often more, beautiful than the rest of daily life. Honi soit qui mal y pense … No, William! You are not being honest with me. You admit that as things are constituted, as society does view it, these furtive and clandestine love affairs are ugly. What defense have you, then, for deliberately seeking the ugly? I can see to the bottom of your soul, William, I know everything in your past, and knowing that, I see everything that will be in your future. All. I can see the way, whenever you go out into the streets, or ride in buses or trains, or go to a concert, — in fact everywhere and at all times — you look greedily about you for a pretty woman, you devour them with your eyes, you move closer to them in order to touch them as if accidentally, you lean backward to touch them, you luxuriate in every curve of mouth and throat and shoulder, you step back (as if politely) to permit them to get into the bus first in order that you may see their legs as far as the knee or even a little farther. You note, as you walk behind them in a crowd, the way their shoulders move as they walk, the curved forward thrust of the thigh, the slight subtle oscillation of the hips, the strength of the gait, and the sweet straightness and resilence of the leg-stroke as observed from behind. You gauge, through their clothes, the proportion of torso to legs, the breadth of waist. You never tire of speculation as to the precise position and dimensions of the breasts; watching a woman’s every slightest motion in the hope that by leaning this way or that, drawing closer her jacket against her body or relaxing it, she will betray to you the secrets of her body. Confess! Kiss the book and sign your name! You are indicted for erotomania!.. Pity me, Cynthia! I will confess everything if only you will believe that never, never, NEVER, was this my attitude toward you. I would have given everything to have been able to wipe out my entire past. My recollections of Eunice, and Helen, and Mary gave me nothing but pain — and all the countless minor episodes, of the sort you have been describing, constituted for me an inferno from which I seemed never destined to escape. Yes. Horrible. To come to the gateway in the rain of fire and looking through it to see the slopes of Purgatory; to guess, beyond, the Paradise; to see you as the gracious wisdom who might guide me thither; and then to know that LAW would not permit, and that in the Inferno must be my abode forever! — Do not think this is merely picturesque or eloquent, Cynthia. No. What I am approaching is a profound psychological truth. It is my own nature, my character as patiently wrought by my character, as the snail builds its house, from which I cannot move. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Do you remember what I wrote to you when you had gone to France? A silly letter, to be sure. Overeloquent, overliterary, sobbingly self-conscious. I told you that I had decided, finally, to go back to America. I had failed with you — to tell you that I adored you was out of the question. But my agile subconscious did the trick. “Do you think,” I said, referring to your description of poppies in Brittany, “that I don’t know a poppy when I see it!” Fatuous! Could anything have been in worse taste? Impossible. My double entendre, of course, is quite clear. The poppy is Europe, and also Cynthia. I was abandoning the poppy not because I failed to appreciate it, but because I recognized my own inferiority. It was my Sabachthani … Tin-tin-tin. Half past one. Good God. Try counting again, shutting my eyes more lightly, breathing through my nose. Hot in here. Ten — ten — double ten — forty-five and fifteen. Um-ber-ella — Cinder-rella—TWIST. What the devil could that have come from? A little girl bouncing a red ball as she said it. Lovely things little girls are — their extraordinary innocence, candor, transparency, charm. Grace. Something light and beautiful in women after all, in spite of their boringness and curious mental and emotional limitations. Toys. Nice to overhear them talking together and laughing in a garden. Nuns in a convent garden. Or singing. How beautiful they are when they sing! That girl, with scarlet-flushed cheeks, singing Morgen,