"What a hideous exhibition," I said, distinctly addressing a grotesque porcelain Buddha on the mantelpiece. Contrary, I believe, to my expectations, he did not reply. My familiar demon forestalled him.
"If by taking a merely conventional attitude," he murmured, "you defeat the natural flowering of two lives——? Who are you to decide that the voice of Nature is not also the voice of God? Supposing, for the moment, that God is other than a poetic expression. If her eyes didn't haunt you," continued my familiar demon, "or a certain way she has of turning her head, like a poised poppy. . . ."
As he droned on within me, the mantelpiece blurred and thinned to the blue haze of a distant Tuscan hill, and the little porcelain Buddha sat upon this hill, very far off now and changed oddly to the semblance of a tiny huddled town. We were climbing along a white road toward that far hill, that tiny town.
"Ambo," she was saying, "that isn't East Rock—it's Monte Senario. And this isn't Birch Street—it's the Faenzan Way. How do you do it, Ambo—you wonderful magician! Just with a wave of your wand you change the world for me; you give me—all this!"
A bee droned at my ear: "Gratitude, my dear sir. Affectionate gratitude. A long step."
"Damn you!" I whimpered. . . . But the grotesque porcelain Buddha was there again, on the mantelshelf. The creases in his little fat belly disgusted me; they were loathsome. I rose. "At least," I said to him, "I can live without you!" Then I seized him and shattered him against the fireplace tiles. It was an enormous relief.
Followed a knock at my door that I answered calmly: "Who is it? Come in."
Miss Goucher never came to me without a mission; she had one now.
"Mr. Hunt," she said, "I should like to talk to you very plainly. May I? It's about Susan." I nodded. "Mr. Hunt," she continued resolutely, "Susan is in a very difficult position here. I don't say that she isn't entirely equal to meeting it; but I dread the nervous strain for her—if you understand?"
"Not entirely, Miss Goucher; perhaps, not at all."