e was no longer here.

His hands felt tired. He was alone again. But he would remember her.
Eyes like conquered Satans. They would crawl again like spiders through
his brain. Breasts like little blind faces raised in prayer. Her body
fluttering like a rich curtain before the door of enchantments. These
were still his.

"Tomorrow, Rita," he murmured aloud to his thoughts.

A figure stirred on the couch. She had watched him come in, his hair
disheveled, his body dragging. Her eyes had followed him as he sat down.
But she had waited motionless. Perhaps he had come back to kill her. She
lay shivering. Then his voice called her name.

Standing slowly, Rita waited. He was asleep but he had called her. She
moved cautiously over the heavy carpet. Mallare opened his eyes. He
looked at the burning-eyed figure of the girl his hands remembered
having killed in the strange street.

"A hallucination," his thought muttered. "But the dead do not come
back."

The scene under the green-white street lamp played its swift detail
through his mind again. He remembered the white throat, the pale,
imploring face. A shudder passed his heart. He had murdered her. Yet
here she stood once more, looking at him.

Mallare smiled.

"Ah," he thought. "Mad, completely mad. Yet it is not as unpleasant as I
feared. Why, indeed, am I startled? This is what I desired. To create
for myself out of myself. And here my phantoms have become so rich and
strong that they confront me. I desired to be God. And I have answered
my own prayer. It is an illusion. Its substance is only the life my
madness gives it. Yet I, who am the companion of my madness, may enjoy
it."

Rita shivered again as he laughed.

"Come closer," he whispered to her. "Or are you too timorous a
hallucination, Rita? Come closer and let me see. What a curious
sensation! To caress the figures of my madness! Then there is no longer
any sanity in me. For my fingers are aware of hair. Ah, dear child,
Mallare is completely mad since at last his senses betray him. But they
betray him sweetly. For though I babble to myself you have no existence,
though I smile at the thought of caressing a phantom, my senses derive a
mysterious pleasure from this contact with nothingness. Curious ...
curious ... come closer, Rita. Now smile at me. Yes, your lips move. You
are an automaton born of my words. Give me your hand. It is warm and
trembling. Ah, my phantom is in love with me. But that love, too, is