“I am kind to him and forgiving. I smile. I even coax him to speak, to move his lips once more. In the snow when he followed me home I was able to detect words his silence spoke.
“‘Blood on your hands,’ he repeated. ‘Think, think, Mallare.’
“I humored him and looked at my hands. They were clean. And I answered him soothingly.
“‘You are an interesting quirk,’ I said. ‘My senses that fancy they have killed a woman have given birth to an illusion of guilt. And you are that illusion. My madness dresses itself in logic like a fishwife hanging rhinestones in her hair.
“‘Be calm,’ I said, ‘Mallare has slain only a phantom, and the murder of illusions is a highly respectable privilege whose exercise is rewarded on earth as well as in heaven.’
[One Hundred Thirty-seven]
“But this creature was not to be diverted from himself.
“‘He is another one of them,’ I thought. ‘He walks and implores and wrings his hand and babbles, ‘blood, blood that was real.’ And there is nothing to be done with him. Another pathologic symptom asks the hospitality of Mallare, and I must make the proper pretense of graciousness and cordiality.
“‘But first I must identify my guest. Take his measure out of the corner of my eye and understand him. Very well, I have been the victim of a hallucination which my senses accepted as real. And which I was able to murder only by pretending I too believed it real. Therefore, having committed this illusory crime, there results this illusory sense of guilt.’
“And thus we walked home, this dumb one and I, his absurd grief confusing me. I will confess. My name on his lips frightened me at first. As it sometimes does now. For he has become more than an illusion of guilt. He [One Hundred Thirty-eight] is, this sly fellow, a memory, inarticulate and envious. He envies me because I am clever enough to laugh at my madness. However, I will consider him later, in his various guises, for of all the Mallares, dumb though he is and ludicrous with inane tears, he interests me the most.
“We walked home and I finally fell to belaboring him. A pest, a mendicant, a croaking idiot—I cursed him out roundly and refused him further attention. This is the wisest course sometimes. It is dangerous to humor too carelessly these sprawling Mallares. They are slyly at war with my omnipotence. I can understand the anger of God. Sacrilege confuses Him. And We are all alike—We Gods. We are forced into an attitude of indifference in order that We may keep Ourselves intact. Thus We look down with Consummate dispassion upon Our hallucinations—Our worlds. And it is this dispassion that men worship in Us, unable to understand Our lack of interest and terrified by Our aloofness they prostrate themselves before an infinite mystery.