thousand flakes are of no account. It is only when the
flakes repeat themselves too endlessly for my eye to distinguish that I
finally ignore them and walk contentedly in a storm. Thus with logic.
When I have surrounded myself with an infinity of assurances, my error
vanishes in the constant repetition of itself. And I am reassured. And
sane.

"Yet I must think simply. The snow seduces me into fellow labyrinths.
I've destroyed her. My senses were in love with her. They responded to
her kisses. She was a Thought able to ravish my body. This is what the
pathologists would identify as a triumph of the psychic sex center. What
charming palaverers--the pathologists! Man crawls in a circle around
himself and fancies himself an invader--a pathologist.

"A matter of no interest. What I have done, as the Christian Scientists
ably put it, is to rid myself of this Thought. But why was it necessary
to strike at it with my hands, to tear it with my fingers? This worries
me. But did I do these things? I must convince myself that I didn't. I
remember sinking my hands into her body, pulling at her flesh. I
remember blows given. She screamed. I struck her and flung her down.
These things I recall.

"But they do not interfere with my convictions. For of what are they
proof? The blows I gave were no more than a shrewd make-believe. To my
senses she was real, and it was necessary therefore to destroy her
realistically. It was easy for my mind to ignore this Thought. I was
never its victim. I merely created it. My senses that belong to life and
not to me, however, became victimized.

"I do not recall myself as a spectator of the struggle. I remember it
now as I might remember participating in an honest fight. A very clever
ruse. It is evident I loaned myself. I surrendered adroitly to my
idiotic senses. Therefore for that hour I was completely mad. What
happened in the room? Ah, what a grotesque memory it makes. Mallare
knocking his fists against the air. Mallare throwing himself around like
an epileptic. Sinking his fingers into nothing--a shadow boxer
pummelling frenziedly at space. That was madness.

"But it served its purpose. For I've destroyed her. Rita, Rita is gone.
Yet there's a curious twist in that. I am lacking one memory. One very
important memory hides from me. I calculate its time and place, but,
like a recalcitrant comet, it fails to enter the appointed void. Alas, I
no longer remember killing her in the street.

"Bu