. Then the mystery of the words he spoke
would not have separated them. Now she could lie on the couch, her head
on her hand, her eyes burning and watch his lips move.

Her mind never asked what he was saying. His words carried him away.
They were part of the mystery of him. Out of them she gleaned fugitive
meanings as one recognizes for an instant familiar faces in a passing
crowd. But she was content to lie watching him. A lethargy filled her.
The days were like parts of a dream. At night, alone, she lay awake
remembering them as a child playing with delicious fantasies.

She was asleep on the couch when Mallare came in. Goliath shuffled away
as his master appeared. He had been standing in the center of the room,
staring at the sleeping Rita, his eyes rolled up and his huge black head
rigid.

She woke and Mallare smiled at her. Her eyes grew large and her red lips
parted.

Mallare, seating himself, studied her with calm. She was his creation.
He was giving her life. His mind was beginning to conceive her as a part
of the phantoms that lived in him and that were his world. This illusion
diverted him. His objective sense fast vanishing, he was gradually
perceiving her as a tangible outline of his own hallucinations.

She was no longer the childish-minded gypsy girl he had found with the
caravan. She was a fantasy of Mallare. There was no body to her but the
body of his curious thoughts. A silent and adoring image of his brain
stared back at him from the vermilion couch. This pleased him.

His madness had translated her into his inner world. At moments a gleam
of doubt disturbed his illusion. As he talked a consciousness of her
eyes would tangle his words. Her eyes would become two dark intruders,
and he would rise and walk away.

"I must be careful," he would mutter nervously.

Away from her the illusion would leave him and his thought would
consider lucidly the situation it had created.

"My madness plays with a dangerous toy," he pondered. "She is a woman
and her eyes are filled with desire. Perhaps she has not even understood
the things I have told her. I must be careful, however, not to betray my
illusions with this lingering sanity. When I am with her I conceive her
a phantom--a something which has stepped out of my madness to divert it.
Her body becomes like one of the dreams in my brain. Her little hands
reach like cobra heads among my intimacies. She is very beautiful that
way. In my mind I caress her