I thought that they were done with me! That all, all, all, was ended! I
have not heard them for twenty years!

But to-day--distinctly--breaking in with brawling impassioned
suddenness upon my consciousness.... I heard.

This late _far niente_ and vacuous inaction here have been undermining
my spirit; this inert brooding upon the earth; this empty life, and
bursting brain! Immediately after eating at noon to-day, I said to
myself:

'I have been duped by the palace: for I have wasted myself in building,
hoping for peace, and there is no peace. Therefore now I shall fly from
it, to another, sweeter work--not of building, but of destroying--not of
Heaven, but of Hell--not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy.
Constantinople--beware!' I tossed the chair aside, and with a stamp was
on my feet: and as I stood--again, again--I heard: the startlingly
sudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble controversy,
till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: 'Go! go!'
and the other: 'Not there...! where you like, ... but not there...! for
your life!'

I did not--for I could not--go: I was so overcome. I fell upon the couch
shivering.

These Voices, or impulses, plainly as I felt them of old, quarrel within
me now with an openness new to them. Lately, influenced by my long
scientific habit of thought, I have occasionally wondered whether what I
used to call 'the two Voices' were not in reality two strong
instinctive movements, such as most men may have felt, though with less
force. But to-day doubt is past, doubt is past: nor, unless I be very
mad, can I ever doubt again.

* * * * *

I have been thinking, thinking of my life: there is a something which I
cannot understand.

There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time,
when I must have been very young--I fancy at some college or school in
England, and his name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lost
in the vast limbo of past things. But he used to talk continually about
certain 'Black' and 'White' Powers, and of their strife for this world.
He was a short man with a Roman nose, and lived in fear of growing a
paunch. His forehead a-top, in profile, was more prominent than the
nose-end, he parted his hair in the middle, and had the theory that the
male form was more beautiful than the female. I forget what his name
was--the dim clear-obscure being. Very profound was the effect of hi