The Final Plunge 237
All the time he has been able to realise dimly that
he was slipping down the dark slope to insanity. He
has mixed it all up with the idea of me. He had begun
to identify me with the phantom of murderous madness
which he recognised as destroying him. A look of
trouble comes into his face every now and then; and
he begins to repeat plaintively in a puzzled voice with
his eyes fixed on mine :-—
“Know you now why her eyes
So fearfully glaze, beholding
Terrors and infamies
Like filthy flowers unfolding?
Laughter widowed of ease,
Agony barred from sadness,
Death defeated of peace,
Is she not madness ? ”
Over and over again he said it, and over and over again
I told him the answer. I had indeed been a personifica-
tion of the seductress, of the destroying angel. But it had
been a nightmare. I had awakened, and he must awake.
But he saw not me any more, but his ideal enveloping
me congealed into my form. No matter what I said,
his fixed idea became constantly stronger as his physical
strength came back.
“She waits for me, lazily leering,
As moon goes murdering moon ;
The moon of her triumph is nearing ;
She will have me wholly soon.”
The rhythm of the poem was still in my own blood ;
but it seemed to have worked itself out into another
channel. I had forgotten the acute personal anguish of
the earlier part of the poem. I could not even remember
the lines any more. I was wholly occupied by the last two
paragraphs where the subject changes so suddenly.
I began to realise what my governess used to call