"That statement is a paradox," said Edmond, "since to be true it must be false. However, there is one statement that is utterly true—a sort of pragmatic Einsteinism, but applicable not merely to pure science but to all things that are." He exhaled an eddying stream of blue cigarette smoke, and continued.
"Gabel! also bothered himself with this problem, and produced a fair solution: `Time gnaws at all things; nothing is permanent save change.' However, a moment's analysis will show that this statement too is only relatively true."
"Ah," said Stein. "Yes."
"The one finality which is absolute—the one truth which is quite true—is this: All things are relative to the point of view; nothing is either true or false save in the mind of the observer."
"Ach," said Stein, "I do not believe that!" "Thereby proving its truth," replied Edmond.
Stein was silent, staring at the thin-lipped ironic countenance beside him.
"As to your last question," continued Edmond, "of course the answer is obvious: There is no meaning at all to life."
"I think all young men have discovered that," said Stein, "only to doubt it when they have grown older."
"I do not mean precisely what you imagine," Edmond replied. "Let me ask you a question. What becomes of a straight line projected along one of the three dimensions of space?"
"It follows the curvature of space, according to Einstein."
"And if you continue it indefinitely?" "It completes a circle."
"Then if time is a dimension of space?"
"I see," said Stein. "You infer that time itself is curved and repeats itself."
"That is the answer to your question," said Edmond gloomily. "This little arc of time that you call life is a minute part of a colossal, hopeless circle, with neither beginning nor end, cause nor objective, but returning endlessly upon itself. Progress is an illusion and fate is inexorable. The past and the future are one, merging one into the other across the diameter of the present. There is no escape even by suicide, since it is all to be done over again, even to that final gesture of revolt."
Silence. Stein, infected at last by the pessimism of his companion, gazed somberly at the river of steel flowing around them. He glanced again at the satyric features of that figure beside him, on whose thin lips flickered for a moment an ironic smile.
"My God!" he said, after a few moments. "Is that your philosophy?"
"Only that part of it which is susceptible to words."
"Susceptible to words? What do you mean?"
"There are two kinds of thoughts," replied Edmond, "which evade expression in language. Words, you must realize, are a rather crude device, a sort of building-block affair, piled together in the general outline of a thought, in phrases or sentences. They are neither flexible nor continuous nor perfectly fitted together, and there are thoughts which lie in the crevices between words—the shades, the finer colorings, the nuances. Words may blunder around the borders of these thoughts, but their expression is a question of feeling or mood."
"Yes," said Stein, "I can comprehend that."
"There is another class of thoughts," said Edmond, so somberly that Stein glanced again at him, "which lies entirely beyond the borders enterable by language, and these are terrible thoughts, which are madness to dwellers in Elfhame."
Stein, following out the course of his own reflections, forbore to answer or question further. A block or two slipped behind them. After a while he spoke.
"You can really think these thoughts?”
"Yes," answered Edmond.
"Then you are claiming to be something else than human?"
"Yes," answered Edmond again.
"Well, I think you are crazy, my friend, but I am not denying the possibility that it is I." His eyes turned to the incredibly delicate hands, one casually guiding the wheel, the other poising a cigarette. "Certainly there are differences. Let me off at Diversey, please."
The car rolled quietly to the curb, and Stein opened the door. He stepped out, standing for a moment with his foot on the running board.
"Thank you for the lift and the lecture," he said. "Always from our rare conversations I take away one gem. Today it is this: That there is no hope anywhere, and the sum total of all knowledge is zero."
Edmond smiled again his thin-lipped sardonic smile.
"When you have really learned that," he said, as the car started slowly forward, "you will be one of us."
For some minutes, Stein stood blinking after the gray car.
CHAPTER XVIII
EDMOND AGAIN FOLLOWS HIS FANCY
WITH the discontinuance of Alfred Stein's distraction, the old longing against which Edmond had struggled flowed back main. The low purr of the motor became intelligible: "Vanny ... Vanny ... Vanny," it muttered in endless repetition. The strident horns about him shrieked a cacaphony whose endlessly recurrent theme was Nanny"! So he came unhappily to Lake View, and to the apartment building that housed his strange domicile.
He slipped his key into the lock of his letter-box; Sarah never bothered to have the mail brought to her, for it was inconceivable that it should contain anything of interest to her. On Edmond, however, fell the responsibility of keeping oiled the machinery of living—there were bills to be paid, and occasionally a technical communication or royalty check from Stoddard. Momentarily Edmond paused startled. Out of the customary series of typed addresses slipped one whose directions appeared in delicate mauve script—an unassuming gray little envelope—thin to the point of transparency. Vanny!
A rare thrill of pleasure rose and subsided in Edmond's being. Whatever Vanny might write could not alter circumstances, could not make those two alien creatures into a common kind, nor break the unbreakable circumference of the circle Time.
He slipped the letter among the several others, and stepped into the automatic lift. In a moment he was entering the apartment which at present sheltered Sarah and himself. As always, Sarah was not in evidence; she would be in the rear, in the second solarium, engaged with her curious little landscapes, or turning obscure thoughts this way and that between her twin minds. It was seldom that they two saw each other now; Sarah was satisfied to be relieved of the burden of procuring food for herself, satisfied in het pregnancy, self-satisfied in her art. Her not very coercive sex tissues were content with Edmond's infrequent praise, his occasional commendations, and his negligible caresses.
Nevertheless, Sarah was a great artist, Edmond admitted to himself—a worthy Eve for her generic Adam, the superwoman intrinsic. She was unharrassed by her environment, adjusted, happy, where Edmond was of all these the antithesis.
Thus Edmond reflected in one of his minds, while the other still surged sea-like about the fact of the letter. He opened it and drew forth a single thin sheet of gray paper, at which he glanced, absorbing the few lines with his accustomed instantaneous perception:
"The love that is too faint for tears,
And scarcely breathes of pain,
Shall linger on a hundred years
And then creep forth again.
But I, who love you now too well
To smile at your disdain,
Must try tonight that love to quell,
And try in vain."
For the third time a surge of pity overwhelmed Edmond, as he stood gazing now over the deep park, to where Lake Michigan split the cold fire of a rising moon into a coruscating path. Vanny! Poor Vanny, with her ice-and-ivory body only half-tenanted! Sweet Vanny, whose life-cycle had so tangled with his that she had lost the thread of it! Dear, human Vanny, who wanted only to live out that cycle in love and peace, like birds and beasts and things natural!
Edmond crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it from the open window, watching it spin downward a dozen stories like a little planet—a world peopled by the hypotheticals and conditionals of his life with Vanny—the ought-to-be's and might-have-been's. Then his eyes turned again to the Satellite, on which he seemed to gaze downward as it lifted gigantic from the far end of the moon-
path. He watched it pour down its rain of silver that the wave crests cracked and flung back in fragments like white petals.
"The dead world strews flowers on the grave of the dying one," he thought, and suddenly perceived this moon as a world ideal. Lifelessness—the happy state toward which all stars and planets tend, when this miasmatic Life-disease had vanished cured. The smaller world yonder, burned clean by solar fire. Scoured clean by the icy void—a world of airless rock—there hung the ultimate, the desired end. Heaven and Hell swinging forever about the common center; Heaven the world of annihilation, Hell the world condemned to life. He crystallized his thought:
"Long miles above cloud-bank and blast,
And many miles above the sea,
I watch you rise majestically,
Feeling your chilly light at last.
There's beauty in the way you cast
Split silver fragments on the waves,
As if a planet's life were past
And men were peaceful in their graves."
A simple conception, reflected his other self—nothing to imply, naught of the terrible inexpressible, a thought bound neatly into language. And yet, in some way, a lofty thought. Edmond was in a measure satisfied, as one who has at last conceived the solution of a difficult problem. And suddenly he was aware of Sarah's presence.
She stood behind him as he turned, her gaunt little body merging with the gloom, her eyes blazing in the lamp light with their accustomed intensity. Strange and alien and rather hideous she seemed, with her fleshless limbs and ashen skin. "I have known a body that was vital, with the curve of ivory and the flash of fire," he thought, "but Sarah's glows only with the pale gleaming of the intellect, which is but a feeble little glimmering that shines through the eyes."
In the moment that their eyes met, Edmond perceived that Sarah was aware of his longings and his misery, and that she held this knowledge without rancor, without anger, because she possessed all of him that she desired. This Sarah understood, having perceived the poison in Edmond's soul, but she perceived without sympathy, comprehended without appreciating, since emotions were things outside of her being. She saw, even as Edmond had seen, the harm and the danger to himself from thus playing with forces unnatural to him; but she had resources and outlets which were denied him; she was within herself sufficient, where Edmond was driven by his unhappiness. Seeing him thus troubled, she spoke:
This is a cruel and foolish thing you do, Edmond you stand at the window overlooking life and are at odds with yourself."
Edmond answered, "But half of me stands over. looking since half of me struggles in the stream of life wherein I cast myself."
"Being as you are, it is your privilege to soar above that stream."
"But it is my pleasure to bathe therein."
"It is a poisonous stream, Edmond. Whomever it sucks into itself, it draws out that one's strength. soiling his body and rolling his soul and his soul's dreams into the mud of its bottom that these things may add themselves to its flood. It is a poisonous stream and its proper name is Phlegethon."
"'This that you say is true," answered Edmond in a low voice, "but it is also true that for all that it exacts, Phlegethon renders a certain price, paying its ac-counts with the scrupulous exactness of a natural law. In the filth of its bed are hidden jewels that are very brilliant, and in all ways desirable, and those that are rolled deepest in the mud are granted the most lovely of these."
"They are ill-starred gems, and are the very essence of the poison."
"Nevertheless," said Edmond, "they are extremely pretty, and sometimes retain their luster for many years."
Sarah moved close to Edmond, gazing into his eyes with the terrible intensity that was her heritage. For a long moment there was silence between them, as they sought to establish that aura of sympathy and of understanding that once had blanketed them. They failed, for the inevitable slow spinning of the Time-circle had twisted them a little apart, so that their twin minds no longer faced squarely each to each. Sarah dropped her eyes; lacking the requisite rapport for that meeting, the communication of the inexpressible was denied her. In her low and equable voice she spoke again:
"Edmond—Edmond—it is a very terrible and obscene thing that you are thinking; I foresee but one outcome." Edmond stood silent, staring outward at the moon which had now ascended perhaps twice its diameter above the coruscating lake.
Then Sarah continued:
"It is far better for you to fulfill your destiny, remaining in your appointed sphere; and it is the poi-son in your body and minds that calls you elsewhere."
Then Edmond replied, turning bitter at last, "You who speak from pure theory, who lack all experience of these things, what can you know of the fierce pleasures and pains of humanity? What can you know of that pleasure which burns so madly that it is pain, that pain so exquisite that it is delight unbearable? How can you know that these are not worth all that I surrender—even to that outcome you threaten?"
"I want none of this," said Sarah, "having watched the poison run its course in you."
"No," said Edmond, again passive, "you want none of this, being of your kind perfect, and having no emotion save one. In you emotion is rarefied to languid little tastes and preferences, likes and dislikes that incline you this way and that, but have not the fine irresistible thrust of emotion that is known to each of those down below on the street."
"What have they that we should envy them?"
"Only their capacity to bear suffering," replied Edmond, "and this is a great and ennobling quality, the one quality that may defeat our kind. For this capacity makes of their lives a very poignant thing, so that they live more intensely than we, and cling fiercely to their pauperous lives only that they may suffer longer."
The two were silent again, sending their minds through strange and not-to-be-understood regions. There was no longer a blanket of sympathy about them; something lacked, some common ground on which to meet. Edmond stood in the plane of silver moonlight which could not lend his face a greater pallor. Beside him in the shadow, Sarah waited silently—passive inscrutable Sarah, whose passions were languid and ineffectual things! Edmond broke the silence:
"I have sometimes wondered whether intellect is indeed worth its price, and whether after all it is not merely the old curse of Adam, divorcing us from the simpler and far nobler things that were long ago. I have a half-memory of such things as are incomprehensible to you, Sarah, who have only a perfect intelligence with which to understand—I confess I do not know."
He turned abruptly and moved toward the halt, while across the moonpath on the lake there seemed to flicker for a moment a curious misty glory that danced and beckoned.
"By your standards, and doubtless by all rational ones, this that I go to do now is very foolish, and void of wisdom; nevertheless, I go not entirely without assurance. For this stream of life you hover above is a deeper flood than you know, and there are reasons buried therein that are outside the grasp of our minds, —even, Sarah, of yours—even deeper than the inexpressible. Therefore I go to face that inevitable out-come not wholly without hope, and go indeed with a pleasure greater than I have ever known."
He moved out into the dark hall. Sarah, on whose face the silver dagger of moonbeams now fell, stood silently gazing after him, with no rancor, no ire in her face, but only a languid little regret glinting about her eyes, and a faint puzzlement therein.
CHAPTER XIX
RETURN TO OLYMPUS
EDMOND stepped from his car before the house on Kenmore Street, and gazed up at it. There flickered the light of a hearth fire from the library—the blue glow of cannel—symbol of warmth and cheer and welcome flung out into the chilly autumn evening. No other lights—did the room hold Paul and Vanny together? Edmond wondered idly with half his mind; it mattered little. He moved toward the entrance, producing his key. Down the street he glimpsed a lurking figure with something of desolation about it; he turned a suddenly intense gaze upon it and it re-treated, vanish
ed.
Edmond unlocked the door, entering; he dropped his coat and hat and ever-present cane upon a chair remembered in the dusk, and turned toward the library whence issued low music from the radio.
Vanny stood before the fireplace of the monkey's skull, her figure outlined against the glow, in an attitude poised, expectant. She wore that purple silken robe which Edmond had himself draped about her, through which her limbs were half-outlined by the flames in long lithe shadows. Her hair was a jet helmet, circling the haunted wistfulness of her eyes. She stood waiting, while Edmond paused a long moment on the threshold, for to his vision the scene held a breath-taking beauty.
He moved into the room, closer to Vanny, studying her. She had grown a trifle thinner, a shade paler, but surely her eyes were less haunted. His second self supplied the answer: "Lacking my presence, the unbearable things she learned are dissipating like heavy gases; having no words to fix them, she cannot recall them clearly, and they grow dream-like."
Vanny dropped to the low fire-bench, looking up at Edmond timidly to read his expression, then with a flaming gladness. Edmond smiled, and for once there was Ittle of irony in his smile. He bent to kiss her, slipping beside her on the bench. There was the scent of wine in her breath and her cheeks were beginning to flush.
"She has bulwarked her brain against my coming," thought Edmond sadly; "my very presence is an assault on her sanity."
Vanny spoke. "Oh, Edmond, I hoped you would come. I have been wanting you."
Edmond's delicate long fingers caressed her; some-thing of beauty had entered his life again, and he was content.
"First I only hoped you would come, Edmond; then when I realized your approach, I sent Paul away, and that was hard to do, and he was very bitter; but by ways I learned of you, I made him go."
Then, "Do you come to stay, Edmond?"
"For as long as is permitted me, dear."
"And is that long?'
"It may be forever—for me."
"Then I am happy, Edmond."
For a space of minutes they were silent, Vanny happy without thought, content in the presence of her loved one. Edmond sat not without thought, but as happy as might be, and whatever of sadness entered him he lost in the mellow flow of music.
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