Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/263

 thoughts grow drowsy and pliant and negligible.

—come more of the Thousand, and my knees and the marrow in my bones are gently aware of most logical opiate ease—

—come more of the Thousand, and my midriff is full of cream-and-chocolate casualness and my smooth arms are washed down with mists of custom.

—come more of the Thousand, and my seven senses start to melt at the edges—

—come more of the Thousand, and the palms of my hands wax merely pleasant-feeling and the soles of my feet fatly comfortable—

—come the last of the Thousand in a swirling silly lovely lightly-insane shower—and I feel exactly like a woman in the next street who goes forth clad in mustard-and-cerise with a devilish black-and-white Valeska-Suratt parasol: and more—much more—I feel the way she looks—

For this Wanton-thing is not amour but psychology: in it I am less the mænad than the philosopher: less the Cyprian woman than the Muse.

I am a deeply gifted woman.

I am not prone on my green couch, frayed, frazzled, bowed-down in spirit from a day of frightful stress and cross-purpose.

Instead, hair-triggerishly alive, with definite desire