Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/242

 me vastly farther on my way. You were a Greek woman in a still earlier time—of a type which murders all simplicity. Your body and mind were haunted by perfervid imagination and both ached with the weight of it. You were made of twisted fires. I grew in that day: grew burdenedly: grew distortedly.'

Always those Greek visions are my 'half-familiar ghosts.'—

Said I: 'Was I sometime a married woman?'

Said the Soul: 'You were—in four separate ages. Which brought you and me singular solitude.'

Said I: 'Was I always woman?'

Said the Soul: 'You were once a young lad of fierce temper and were at twenty a madman. And died mad. No male body and brain could withstand and outface merely the emotional besiegings of you.'

Said I: 'When I went mad, what of you?'

Said the Soul: 'I fell asleep, and knew no rest, but dreamed.'

Said I: 'Of what?'

Said the Soul: 'Things I always dreamed in your mad lapses—poetry served very conscious and very hot: the material Color of the Sunshine: the musical Softness of the Dawns: the pulsing Thoughts in Girls' Throats: the Scent of Water-Falls.'

The Soul has an airless voice which tells her mean-