here are thoughts
impossible to think. Yes, impossible."

Again silence filled him. His drawn eyes widened.

"Mallare," he whispered, "you are a madman. I know. This chokes. Yes. It
was I--I, Mallare. It is I who have been mad. I have been mad myself.
Not you. No, not you! But the God--the Strange Pose. I can't. An
impossible denouement. My head breaks. Her blood ... Rita."

He stared open mouthed at a question that circled toward him out of the
snow. Words babbled in his head. He shook himself away from them and
stared.

"She was alive!" he cried aloud. "My phantom lived. It was I who was the
phantom. And she--alive!"

His face whitened, his eyes remained inanimate and gleaming with terror.
Then the figure of Mallare fell forward and lay curved in the snow.

[Illustration: Eighth Drawing]

[VIII]

_From the Journal of Mallare dated January._

"I am the one who contemplates. I am the Knowing One. There is nothing I
do not know. It is amazing to be Mallare. I have triumphed over five
worlds. I look down upon a rabble of Mallares. There are five
Mallares--five sullen looking madmen. One of them sits and listens to
voices. Another of them wanders about, staring with sad eyes at
intolerable visions. Another of them lies on his back, babbling
excitedly with the darkness. Another of them eats and sleeps like a
prosperous grocer. And there is a fifth Mallare who weeps. A baffling
rogue who puts his arms around me and blubbers on my shoulder like a
lodge brother. He says nothing, and of them all I dislike him the most.

"His silence is mysterious. His tears are uncomfortable. A distressing
ass, weeping, blubbering. He implores me. Aha, I have it. I know his
secret. He is memory--a memory of myself following me around like a
heart-broken mother a wayward son.

"Five Mallares, five sinister comedians to entertain me. And I, what can
I call myself--pure reason? No, a disgusting title. Rather, Unreason,
since I am after all the Indifferent One. But all this is a quibble
inspired by modesty. I am God. I am that which men have worshipped--the
aloof one, the pitiless and amused one.

"The five tribes of Mallare rage and curse beneath me, fill the air with
profanations, weep and gibber in the night. But I sit inviolate and wait
for them--even for that blubbering one whose tongue is thick with tears
and whose idiot eyes implore me--and they return. They raise their faces
to me, their God, and fall prostrate