ges of my madness. I can no longer see or
understand. The world is a memory that expires under my thought. I am
alone. Yet how much of me must still be the world! My dearest phantoms
are, after all, no more than distorted reminiscences. I fear, alas, this
is the truth. Yet it is pleasant to be alone with one's senses, to feel
an independence."

The woman awaiting him was a curious creature. He had found her with a
family of gypsies on the outskirts of the city. She was young--eighteen.
His money had bought her release. She was called Rita and after two
weeks she had agreed to come home with him. An old man in the caravan
had said to her:

"This man is crazy. You can see that by his eyes and the way he walks. I
have listened to him for two weeks and I know he is crazy. But you go
with him, Rita. He is lonely and wants a woman. You go with him and obey
him. You are young and he will teach you. Perhaps even you will fall in
love with him. You are an ignorant child. Your mind is like a baby's.
And perhaps you will not understand that he is crazy."

Among the gypsies with whom she had lived Rita was known as a simple
one. She was never to be trusted to enter the cities they visited. She
would remain with the wagons, helping to cook and wash. When men came to
her in the evening and, sitting beside her, sang and played on guitars,
she would listen for a moment and then run off. The old ones of the
caravan said:

"She is not grown up. We must treat her like a child because there is
still only a child's heart in her. She is beautiful but without sense.
Some day she will make a good wife. But there is danger that she may
give her body to strangers. Because she does not know about such things.
We must be careful for her."

Sitting along the summer roads outside the city Mallare talked to the
child. She listened without understanding but after days had passed,
dreams of the man with the black hair slanting across his forehead came
to her when she was alone. So when the Old One of the caravan said--

"You may go with this stranger. You can go away if you wish"; she nodded
and smiled with happiness.

Mallare brought her home. And she had lived in the carnelian room that
was colored like the inside of a Burgundy bottle ever since. Goliath was
her slave. Mallare was her God.

At first he had said little to her. She wanted him to talk but he
neither talked nor paid other attention. He brought her ribbons and
dresses, trinkets,