“And I too ... and I too ... and I too,” they all clamoured, turning angrily upon themselves.
Clorinda pulled the strange scarf from her shoulders where Reuben had left it, and, handling it so, she became aware of her many fugitive sojournings upon the earth. It seemed that all of her past had become knit in the scarf into a compact pattern of beauty and ugliness of which she was entirely aware; all its multiplexity being immediately resolved ... the habitations with cave men, and the lesser human unit of the lesser later day. Patagonian, Indian, Cossack, Polynesian, Jew ... of such stuff the pattern was intimately woven, and there were little plangent perfect moments of the past that fell into order in the web. Clorinda watching the great seabird with pink feet louting above the billows that roared upon Iceland, or Clorinda hanging her girdle upon the ebony hooks of the image of Tanteelee. She had taken voyaging drafts upon the whole world, cataract jungle and desert, ingle and pool and strand, ringing the changes upon a whole gamut of masculine endeavour ... from a prophet to a haberdasher. She could feel each little life lying now as in a sarsnet of cameos upon her visible breasts: thereby for these ... these men ... she was draped in an eternal wonder. But she could not recall any image of her past life in these realms, save only that her scarf was given back to her on every return by a man of these men.
She could remember with humility her transient passions for them all. None, not one, had ever given her the measure of her own desire, a strong harsh flame that fashioned and tempered its own body; nothing but a nebulous glow that was riven into embers before its beam had sweetened into pride. She had gone from them childless always and much as a little child.
From the crowd of quarrelling ghosts a new figure detached itself, and in its approach it subdued that vague vanishing which had been so perplexing to Clorinda. Out of the crowd it slipped, and loomed lovingly beside her, took up her thought and the interrogation that came into her mind.
“No,” it said gravely, “there is none greater than these. The ultimate reaches of man’s mind produce nothing but images of men.”
“But,” said Clorinda, “do you mean that our ideals, previsions of a vita-nuova....”
“Just so,” it continued, “a mere intoxication. Even here you cannot escape the singular dower of dreams ... you can be drunk with dreams more easily and more permanently than with drugs.”
The group of husbands had ceased their quarrelling to listen; Clorinda swept them with her glances thoughtfully and doubtfully.
“Could mankind be so poor,” the angel resumed, “as poor as these, if it housed something greater than itself?”
With a groan the group of outworn husbands drew away. Clorinda turned to her companion with disappointment and some dismay.... “I hardly understand yet ... is this all then just....”