Page:I, Mary MacLane (1917).pdf/331

 False: False from her fingertips to her innermost concept.

It is belike because of that that this, as itself, oddly Fails.

It is as if I have made a portrait not of Me, but of a Room I have just quitted. My Gloves are left on a chair: my Hat is left on a couch: my taken-off Shoes are left on the floor: my faint-smelling Handkerchief is dropped by the door: my round ribboned Garter is hanging on the door-knob: my Breath is in the air: my Grief is on the walls clinging like smoke: my flat Despair is on the petunia-leaves in the window: my fragrant Horridness lingers in the curtains. I am not there! But I—I have just Quitted that Room!—

Therein I have slyly Succeeded.

My feeling at my book's-end is a prayer-feeling, both frantic and quiet: God have mercy on me! but not unless you want to.

And I feel barbarous and utterly solitary, solitary from here to Jericho, solitary from here to the cool stars.

There comes off the grim gray east hills a soft whelming taste of Sunset, bloody and full of human marrows.

And I feel a need of great Pain or great Sin to make and break me, Soul and bones.