surroundings, and your nature developed on the best lines possible without
check. You married early."
"Yes; but there was trouble. I divorced my husband, and married again two
years later."
"That was the Marquis la Giuffria?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, you left him, although he was a good husband, and devoted to
you, to throw in your lot with Lavinia King."
"I have lived with her for five years, almost to a month."
"Then why? I used to know her pretty well myself. She was, even in those
days, heartless, and mercenary; she was a sponger, the worst type of
courtezan; and she was an intolerable poseuse. Every word of hers must have
disgusted you. Yet you stick to her closer than a brother."
"That's all true! But she's a sublime genius, the greatest artist the world has
ever seen."
"She has a genius," distinguished Simon Iff. "Her dancing is a species of
angelic possession, if I may coin a phrase. She comes off the stage from an
interpretation of the subtlest and most spiritual music of Chopin or
Tschaikowsky; and forthwith proceeds to scold, to wheedle, or to blackmail.
Can you explain that reasonably by talking of `two sides to her character'? It
is nonsense to do so. The only analogy is that of a noble thinker and his
stupid, dishonest, and immoral secretary. The dictation is taken down
correctly, and given to the world. The last person to be enlightened by it is
the secretary [25] himself! So, I take it, is the case with all genius; only in
many cases the man is in more or less conscious harmony with his genius,
and strives eternally to make himself a worthier instrument for his master's
touch. The clever man, so-called, the man of talent, shuts out his genius by
setting up his conscious will as a positive entity. The true man of genius
deliberately subordinates himself, reduces himself to a negative, and allows
his genius to play through him as It will. We all know how stupid we are
when we try to do things. Seek to make any other muscle work as
consistently as your heart does without your silly interference — you cannot
keep it up for forty-eight hours. (I forget what the record is, but it's not much
over twenty-four.) All this, which is truth ascertained and certain, lies at the
base of the Taoistic doctrine of non-action; the plan of a doing everything by
seeming to do nothing. Yield yourself utterly to the Will of Heaven, and you
become the omnipotent instrument of that Will. Most systems of mysticism