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A GRUESOME DANCE |
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marvellously gorgeous colouring and combinations of colour, some of a pure and dazzling whiteness.
Coming to a spot where the pines stood farther apart and gave room for flowering shrubs, and hoping it a sign of some dwelling near, I took the direction where yet more and more roses grew, for I was hungry after the voice and face of my kind—after any live soul, indeed, human or not, which I might in some measure understand. What a hell of horror, I thought, to wander alone, a bare existence never going out of itself, never widening its life in another life, but, bound with the cords of its poor peculiarities, lying an eternal prisoner in the dungeon of its own being! I began to learn that it was impossible to live for oneself even, save in the presence of others—then, alas, fearfully possible! evil was only through good ! selfishness but a parasite on the tree of life ! In my own world I had the habit of solitary song; here not a crooning murmur ever parted my lips ! There I sang without thinking; here I thought without singing! there I had never had a bosom-friend ; here the affection of an idiot would be divinely welcome ! ' If only I had a dog to love !' I sighed—and regarded with wonder my past self, which preferred the company of book or pen to that of man or woman; which, if the author of a tale I was enjoying appeared, would wish him away that I might return to his story. I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking! 'Any man,' I said now, ' is more than the greatest of books !' I had not cared for my live brothers and sisters, and now I was left without even the dead to comfort me !
The wood thinned yet more, and the pines grew yet
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