"And this is the index?"
"No, not exactly. I soon tired of the experiment, for there was such wholesale murder it was impossible to keep pace with it. I then confined myself to the martyrs, the veritable martyrs broken on the rack of human emotion. Here are a few—with remarks and dates—they have each a little history of love or heroism or——" he shuffled for a term.
"Lunacy," I offered.
"Yes, that is the best word. They convey little histories of lunacy—my own and others."
"May I inspect them?"
"You may," he conceded, throwing himself into an arm-chair and looking over his elbow at the open page. "First," he said, "some rose leaves." He coughed slightly, and stirred the fire with caution, as though it shaped some panorama he feared to disarrange. Then he began his story:—
"First some rose leaves shaken into the finger-glass of a great actress—you know Lalage?—on the night when all Paris was intoxicated by her. It was my supper, and she honoured me. Many men would gladly have been that rose—to lay down its life for a touch of her finger-tips: several have parted with all that life holds dear for less than that."
He struck a match and lit a cigarette, throwing the case to me, and then proceeded:—
"The bowls were fragrant with attar, and those petals like fairy boats skimmed over the scented surface of the water. They seemed very red then, but they are faded enough now."
He again stared at the fire as though to assist his memory by its pictures.