The Equinox (Volume I, Number VI)

THE EQUINOX she was seductive, alluring, a Messalina rather than an Aspasia, Chienne de race! She was young, and her lips rather sneered than smiled, rather gloated than sneered. One instinctively muttered the word cmn/liba]. She had a perfect and perverse enjoyment of life, a perfect and perverse con- tempt of life; the contempt of the philosopher, the enjoyment of the wallowing pig. Porcus e grege Epicuri. This much Edgar Rolles smelt rather than saw; for as he turned to her, he caught her eyes. They were the eyes of an enthusiast, of a saint, of an ascetic—but of a saint who, strong in his agony through faith and hope and love, still endures the Dark Night of the Soul. "You shall lunch with me, nice boy " (she said), ”and beg my pardon for your stumble, and pay for your lunch by tell- ing me what drives you mad with laughter at the sight of the Pantheon. Is it ‘L’homme aux trois sous’?” For so the irreverent Frenchman, mindful of his daily need, calls Rodin’s " Le Penseuri" “ Mademoiselle,” said Rolles, “I accept your kind invita— tion; I abandon the Church for the Tavern." They turned into the Taverne du Pantheon, threading their way through the professors and their mistresses, a clever, incurious,domestic, fascinating crowd. “I kiss your hands and your feet, and I will tell you the joke before lunch; so that you may repent in time if it is not amusing In your ear, enchantressl The truth is—I am a great man.” She saw it in a flash. ”Then, my friend, I must bury you I" " In your hair I ” he cried. She had huge rolling masses of 116