nd therefore where the necessity
of a conscience to celebrate her crime?

"'But you remained and grew more dolorous. Then you are something else.
I suspect you of being the adroit ambassador the madmen have sent into
my heaven to plead their cause. Yet why do you not plead? As an
ambassador you are a tongue-tied, sniveling idiot. Therefore again, you
escape logic. And without logic my madness becomes slyly
incomprehensible to me.

"'We watch each other like two careful wrestlers, eh? But what hold do
you want? Tell me and I will let you try your strength. No--tears,
nothing else. You weep, weep until the sight of you is an impossible
ennui.

"'Ah, perhaps you are a memory of Mallare. Something forgotten. Logic
approaches you as I think. Something forgotten. And you are overcome at
my infidelity. Like Goliath you mourn a vanished one. But there is this
difference. Whereas Goliath is real and the object of his mourning is a
phantom--you and not I are the phantom. Yes, a phantom mourns me. But
speak then. I have no objection to memory. Let me hear what this is all
about and I will admit what you say. I will admit it all beforehand.

"'But no. You expect something else. You expect Mallare to fall at your
feet and embrace you. I can see that in your eyes--a monotonous
expectation that grows ludicrous. Yes, your tears grow ludicrous. I
tolerate you for only one purpose. You are a problem that diverts me.
For if I desired I could do with you as I did with Rita. There are ways
to make you too nauseous.

"'Yes, I might invent another hate for myself. My hands might tear you
as they tore her. And then, filled with a fury against me, you too
might turn to Goliath. He is still mad, my dwarf, and susceptible to the
phantoms I send him. Do you want to go to him as she did? Aha! You
wince. Remember then that Mallare has it in his power to send you to his
dwarf, to make you take her place over his terrible body. And Mallare
will do this if you annoy him too much. And then, sickened with you as
he was with her, he will disgorge another shadow. Let us be frank about
this. I warn you.'

"Thus I sit and talk quietly to this weeping one. And when I stop I
watch his lips move with my name.

"'Mallare,' they say.

"This is his only answer to my overtures. But I will win him over. He
will come close to my smile and kneel finally before me. He will confess
who he is and what my name means.

"I grow tired. Goliath stands by his shrin