Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/229

 coat, I thought of the parcel that Dorothy had entreated me to "pitch—pitch where no one will ever find it." Poor pathetic, distracted little Dorothy! It was only an empty silver flask, wrapped in her brother's handkerchief and neatly engraved with his monogram. Poor little distracted Bacchante—apparently it hadn't occurred to her that the breath of whiskey still strong in the silver flask was doubtless giving even stronger evidence elsewhere.

The thing hurt me, and I put it away. Everything that I tried to think of, however, hurt me. I wanted to escape from too much sensation. But my mind was in that state of fatigue-intoxication in which one seems to be simply an observer of a succession of pictures which form spontaneously there. I was conscious of wishing to reflect consecutively on a certain idea, namely, whether Willys was right in declaring that one can't kill a god. But the moment that I began to grip the idea, and ask myself whether in the course of history many terrible old gods and dynasties of gods had not utterly passed away under the pressure of that Necessity which encompasses the gods and is stronger than they—pictures began to form: Bacchanalian women dancing in the