Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/250

 been guilty in his career of every iniquity and meanness and cowardice: now, facing instant death, he finds time to think of snuff and phrase-making But—to go back a little—I had thought the Sabbat would be so different! One imagined there would be cauldrons, and hags upon prancing broomsticks, and a black goat, of course—"

"How much more terrible it is—and how beautiful!"

"Yet—even now I may not touch you, Ettarre."

"My friend, all men have striven to do that; and I have evaded each one of them at the last, and innumerable are the ways of my elusion. There is no man but has loved me, no man that has forgotten me, and none but has attempted to express that which he saw and understood when I was visible."

"Do I not know? There is no beauty in the world save those stray hints of you, Ettarre. Canvas and stone and verse speak brokenly of you sometimes; all music yearns toward you, Ettarre, all sunsets whisper of you, and it is because