“It is curious,” he whispered aloud. “Then I am still mad. Careful … mad. For there was blood … and not mine. So it would seem I have been seducing myself with optimisms. A true madman. Yes, a lunatic mumbling excitedly to himself in the snow all night, saying:
“Sane. Mallare is quite sane.”
He laughed softly.
“Oh, yes. I’m too clever for you, Mallare. Very much too clever. You present a pair of red hands to me. I wash them carefully in the snow. They become white. Interesting phenomena.”
He chuckled softly and stared at the snow and swollen trees.
“The old circle again,” he murmured. “And I begin the absorbing hide and go seek with my senses. Who am I and where do I end? And who are they and where do they [One Hundred Thirty] begin? Let us study the phenomenon of red hands. Primo—how do I know there was blood? My eyes said, ‘blood.’ And the snow is red. But that is only because my eyes, infatuated with an idea, repeat the information.
“But I, Mallare, who am no madman’s pawn, no lickspittle secretary to my senses, I say, ‘no blood.’ I am the Pope. I excommunicate the phenomenon.
“Ah, if there is blood, I fought with one who could bleed. And even my cleverness could not supply arteries in a phantom. Ergo, there is no blood. I am still mad. I see that which is not. But it is nothing to be disturbed about. In fact, it is a diversion.”
The snow slowly covered the figure of Mallare. His drawn eyes balanced themselves amid the flakes.
“It snows, snows,” he murmured after a pause. “And I remember something. What is it I think! Rita … Yes, there would be blood if Rita were … Hm, the murdered [One Hundred Thirty-one] one. There was something I didn’t remember while I walked.