Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/111

 animal. She considered: not like a doe, more like a tiger; graceful and exquisite. . . and hungry! Campaspe smiled.

She recalled a phrase from A. E., which she had run across a day or so earlier: I could not desire what was not my own, and what is our own we cannot lose. . . . Desire is hidden identity. . . . Was life, she queried of the alert face in her mirror, a straight or a zigzag line? Do we, perhaps, live backwards and forwards, with memories of the past and mystic visions of the future? She remembered how some one had said of her that she was like a pleasant pool. . . exposing a dormant silvery surface. . . or rippling placidly. . . with shadows, which portended hidden depths. No one, she reflected, save herself, knew how deep the pool was, or what might lie concealed at the bottom. . . . Shadows! There must be a philosophy of shadows! Shadows were the only realities. And there were always shadows, but most people overlooked the shadow in their search for the object which cast it. It was, she assured herself, like searching for Richard Wagner, instead of listening to Tristan. She smiled again as a phrase of Paul's recurred to her: Campaspe does not know the vices, she invents them! Invents them! Imagination, that was the shadow of personality, assuredly the deepest enchantment! Savoir n'est rien, imaginer est tout. Rien n'existe que ce qu'on imagine, the sagacious fairy had remarked to Sylvestre Bonnard. . ..