“You are afraid of me,” she said.
“I think not,” I answered, “but you disturb my dreams. Most horribly you disturb them.”
“So already it has begun to work on you,” she said with mild interest.
“Have you cast a spell upon me?” I asked. “Am I in a state of semi-hypnosis?”
“I have done nothing. It is not you whom I want. It is Lovelace.”
I made but a scanty meal, and as I walked to the station I was resolved that Miss Langdon should not enter my thoughts all day. She had spoken the truth: I was afraid of her. I feared her as the drunkard fears alcohol, as the morphinomaniac fears his drug.
But who can command his thoughts when those thoughts have for their breeding-place senses that have been whipped to excitement by the invitation of sex? I was unhappy all day.
From Eleusis I walked along a narrow track to the sea. I bathed, and then sat naked in the sun. Again I bathed among the rocks, and once more sat gazing upon the blue islands and the purple islands and the green land near. No human being was in sight, no dwelling-place, no sign of life. Even the sky was empty of birds.
It was not difficult for me to imagine it was two thousand years ago. Then everything—sky, sea, and land—would appear exactly as it did now. Perhaps in those times men were wiser than they are to-day. True, mankind had collected and co-ordinated a few million facts unknown to the men and women who worshipped and sacrificed in the Temple of Demeter, but, after all, what are facts? Are they not the very masks of truth, as a man’s face is the mask of his soul?...
Almost could I see her in the divine Temple, worshipped and feared.... Woman enthroned; man on his knees, craving a boon. Woman in league with Nature: man Nature’s victim. Woman accepting; man giving....