“To-morrow she will be well.” He placed his hand upon my shoulder and brought his dark, evil, brazen eyes closer to my face: “The passion of love, eh?”
I shook off his hand and shouted:
“Signor Magnus! I....”
“You?”—he frowned at me and calmly turned his back upon me: “Till to-morrow, Mr. Wondergood!”
That is why I loaded my revolver. In the evening I was handed a letter from Magnus: he begged my pardon, said his conduct was due to unusual excitement and he sincerely sought my friendship and confidence. He also agreed that his collaborators are really ill-mannered folk. I gazed long upon these hasty illegible lines and felt like taking with me, not my revolver, but a cannon.
One more night, but how long it is!
There is danger facing me.
I feel it and my muscles know it, too. Do you think that I am merely afraid? I swear by eternal salvation—no! I know not where my fear has disappeared, but only a short while ago I was afraid of everything: of darkness, death and the most inconsequential pain. And now I fear nothing. I only feel strange...is that how you put it: strange?
Here I am on your earth, man, and I am thinking of another person who is dangerous to me and I myself am—man. And there is the moon and the fountain. And there is Maria, whom I love. And here is a glass and wine. And this is—my and your life. Or did I simply imagine that I was Satan once? I see it is all an invention, the fountain and Maria and my very thoughts on the man—Magnus, but the real my mind can neither unravel nor understand. I assiduously examine my memory and it is silent, like a closed book, and I have no power to open this enchanted volume, concealing the whole past of my being. Straining my eyesight, I gaze into the bright and distant depth from which I came upon this pasteboard earth—but I see nothing in the painful ebb and flow of the boundless fog. There, behind the fog, is my country, but it seems—it seems I have quite forgotten the road.
I have again returned to Wondergood’s bad habit of getting drunk alone and I am slightly drunk now. No matter. It is the last time. I have just seen something after which I wish to see nothing else. I felt like taking a look at the white garden and to imagine how it would feel to walk beside Maria over the path of blue sand. I turned off the light in the room and opened wide the draperies. And the white garden arose before me, like a dream, and—think of it!—over the path of blue sand there walked a man and a woman—and the woman was Maria! They walked quietly, trampling upon their own shadows, and the man embraced her. The little counting machine in my breast beat madly, fell to the floor and broke, when, finally, I recognized the man—it was Magnus, only Magnus, dear Magnus, the father. May he be cursed with his fatherly embraces!