Gray, gray, gray. An aged woman. So she seems, for she creeps along by the help of a crutch. But over her face is a veil which falls to the ground over her arms like the folded wings of a bat.
I begin to laugh, for spirits have long ceased to inspire me with reverence.
"Is your name by any chance Thea, O lovely, being?" I ask.
"My name is Thea," she answers and her voice is weary, gentle and a little hoarse. A caressing shimmer as of faintly blue velvet, an insinuating fragrance as of dying mignonette—both lie in this voice. The voice fills my heart. But I won't be taken in, least of all by some trite ghost which is in the end only a vision of one's own sick brain.
"It seems that the years have not changed you for the better, charming
Thea," I say and point sarcastically to the crutch.
"My wings are broken and I am withered like yourself."
I laugh aloud. "So that is the meaning of this honoured apparition! A mirror of myself—spirit of ruin—symbolic poem on the course of my ideas. Pshaw! I know that trick. Every brainless Christmas poet knows it, too. You must come with a more powerful charm, O Thea, spirit of the herb tea! Good-bye. My time is too precious to be wasted by allegories."
"What have you to do that is so important?" she asks, and I seem to see the gleam of her eyes behind the folds of the veil, whether in laughter or in grief I cannot tell.
"If I have nothing more to do, I must die," I answer and feel with joy how my defiance steels itself in these words.
"And that seems important to you?"