«You’re disturbed. What is it?»
«What you said about me—it frightens me… So I’m no help to you, is that it?»
«You have helped, in a way,» she replied. «You always help, indirectly. You can’t help radiating energy, and that is something. People lean on you, but you don’t know why. You even hate them for it, though you act as though you were kind and truly sympathetic. When I came here to-night I was a bit shaken inwardly; I had lost that confidence I usually have. I looked at you and I saw… what do you think?»
«A man flushed with his own ego, I suppose.»
«I saw an animal! I felt that you would devour me, if I were to let myself go. And for a moment or two I felt that I wanted to let myself go. You wanted to take me, throw me down on the carpet. To have me that way wouldn’t have satisfied you, would it? You saw in me something you had never observed in another woman. You saw the mask which is your own.» She paused for just a second. «You don’t dare to reveal your real self, nor do I. That much we have in common. I live dangerously, not because I am strong, but because I know how to make use of others’ strength. I am afraid not to do the things I do because if I were to stop I would collapse. You read nothing in my eyes because there is nothing to read. I have nothing to give you, as I told you a moment ago. You look only for your prey, your victims on whom you fatten. Yes, to be a writer is probably the best thing for you. If you were to act out your thoughts you would probably become a criminal. You have always the choice of going two ways. It is not the moral sense which deters you from going the wrong way—it is your instinct to do only that which will serve you best in the long run. You don’t know why it is you abandon your brilliant projects; you think it is weakness, fear, dubiety, but it isn’t. You have the instincts of the animal; you make everything subservient to the desire to live. You would not hesitate to take me against my will, even if you knew you were in a trap. The man trap you are not afraid of, but the other trap, the trap which would set your feet in the wrong direction, that you are wary of. And you are right.» Again she paused. «Yes, you did me a great service. If I had not met you to-night I would have given in to my doubts.»
«Then you are about to do something dangerous,» I said.
She shrugged her shoulders. «Who knows what is dangerous? To doubt, that is dangerous. You will have a much more dangerous time of it than I. And you will cause a lot of harm to others in defending yourself from your own fears and doubts. You are not even sure at this moment that you will go back to the woman you love. I have poisoned your mind. You would drop her like that if you were sure that you could do what you wanted without her aid. But you will need her and you will call it love. You will always fall back on that excuse when you are sucking the life out of a woman.»
«That is where you are wrong,» I interrupted with some heat. «It’s me who gets sucked dry, not the woman.»
«That is your way of deceiving yourself. Because the woman can never give you what you want you make yourself out to be a martyr. A woman wants love and you’re incapable of giving love. If you were a lower type of man you would be a monster; but you will convert your frustration into something useful. Yes, by all means go on writing. Art can transform the hideous into the beautiful. Better a monstrous book than a monstrous life. Art is painful, tedious, softening. If you don’t die in the attempt, your work may transform you into a sociable, charitable human being. You are big enough not to be satisfied with mere fame, I can see that. Probably, when you have lived enough, you will discover that there is something beyond what you now call life. You may yet live to live for others. That depends on what use you make of your intelligence.» (We looked at one another keenly.) «For you are not as intelligent as you think you are. That is your weakness, your overweening intellectual pride. If you rely exclusively on that you defeat yourself. You have all the feminine virtues, but you are ashamed to acknowledge them to yourself. You think because you are strong sexually that you are a virile man, but you are more of a woman than a man. Your sexual virility is only the sign of a greater power which you haven’t begun to use. Don’t try to prove yourself a man by exploiting your powers of seduction. Women are not fooled by that sort of strength and charm. Women, even when they are subjugated mentally, are always master of the situation. A woman may be enslaved, sexually, and yet dominate the man. You will have a harder time than other men because to dominate another doesn’t interest you. You will always be trying to dominate yourself; the woman you love will only be an instrument for you to practice on…»
Here she broke off. I saw that she expected me to go.
«Oh, by the way,» she said, as I was making my adieu, «the gentleman asked me to give you this»—and she handed me a sealed envelope. «He’s probably explained why he couldn’t make a better excuse for leaving so mysteriously.» I took the envelope and shook hands with her. If she had suddenly said: «Run! run for your life!» I would have done so without question. I was completely mystified, knowing neither why I had come nor why I was leaving. I had been whisked into it on the crest of a strange elation the origin of which now seemed remote and of little concern to me. From noon to midnight I had gone full circle.
I opened the envelope in the street. It contained a twenty dollar bill enclosed in a sheet of paper on which was written «Good Luck to you!» I was not altogether surprised. I had expected something of the sort when first I laid eyes on him…
A few days after this episode I wrote a story called «Free Fantasia» which I brought to Ulric and read aloud to him. It was written blindly, without thought of beginning or end. I had just one fixed image in mind throughout, and that was of swinging Japanese lanterns. The piece de resistance was a kick in the slats which I gave the heroine in the act of submission. This gesture, which was aimed at Mara, was more of a surprise to me than it could possibly be to the reader. Ulric thought the writing quite remarkable but confessed he couldn’t make head nor tail of it. He wanted me to show it to Irene whom he was expecting later. She had a perverted streak in her, he said. She had returned to the studio with him late that night, after the others had gone, and she had almost bled him to death. Three times ought to be enough to satisfy any woman, he thought, but this one could keep it up all night. «The bitch can’t stop coming,» he said. «No wonder her husband’s a paralytic—she must have twisted the Cock off him.»
I told him what had occurred the other night when I left the party abruptly. He shook his head from side to side, saying—«By God, those things never happen to me. If anybody but you were to tell me a story like that I wouldn’t believe it. Your whole life seems to be made up of just such incidents. Now why is that, can you tell me? Don’t laugh at me, I know it sounds foolish to ask such a question. I know too that I’m a rather cagey bird. You seem to lay yourself wide open—I suppose that’s the secret of it. And you’re more curious about people than I will ever be. I get bored too easily—it’s a fault, I admit. So often you tell me of the wonderful time you’ve had—after I’ve left. But I’m sure nothing like you relate would happen to me even if I were to sit up all night… Another thing about you that gets me is that you always find a character interesting whom most of us would ignore. You have a way of opening them up, of making them reveal themselves. I haven’t got the patience for it… But tell me honestly now, aren’t you just a bit sorry that you didn’t get your end in with what’s her name?»
«Sylvia, you mean?»
«Yes. You say she was a Loulou. Don’t you think you could have stayed another five minutes and had what was coming to you?»
«Yes, I suppose so…»
«You’re a funny fellow. I suppose you mean to say that you got something more by not staying, is that it?»
«I don’t know. Perhaps I did, perhaps not. To tell you the truth, I
