The Stratagem and Other Stories

And yet we know how tumour of the brain begets hallu- cinations. Consciousness works strangely; the least dis- turbance of the blood supply, and it goes out like a can- dle, or else takes monstrous forms. Here was the overwhelming truth; in death man lives again, and lives for ever. Yet we might have thought of it; the phantasmagoria of life which throng the mind of a drowning man might have suggested something of the sort to any man with a sympathetic and active imagination. Worse even than the thoughts themselves was the apprehension of the thoughts ere they arose. Carbun- cles, boils, ulcers, cancers, there is no equivalent for these pustules of the bowels of hell, into whose seething convolutions Arthur sank deeper, ever deeper. The magnitude of this experience is not to be ap- prehended by the human mind as we know it. I was convinced that an end must come, for me, with the cre- mation of the body. I was infinitely glad that he had di- rected this to be done. But for him, end and beginning seemed to have no meaning. Through it all I seemed to hear the real Arthur's thought. “Though all this is I, yet it is only an accident of me; I stand behind it all, im- mune, eternal.” It must not be supposed that this in any way de- tracted from the intensity of the suffering. Rather it added to it. To be loathsome is less than to be linked to loathsomeness. To plunge into impurity is to become deadened to disgust. But to do so and yet to remain pure—every vileness adds a pang. Think of Madonna imprisoned in the body of a prostitute, and compelled to acknowledge “This is I,” while never losing her abhor- rence. Not only immured in hell, but compelled to par- take of its sacraments; not only high priest at its aga- pae, but begetter and manifestor of its cult; a Christ nauseated at the kiss of Judas, and yet aware that the treachery was his own.