"What I must do, is make him think. He doesn't think. The pictures he sees pass like blurs through his eyes and come out like blurs under his pencil. If I can make him think he'll have to open his eyes. He'll have to defend what he accepts without defenses now--the nobility of the masses, the beauty of life. And if he starts thinking and doubting he won't be able to write because he's not built to write that way. He's built to write out of passion." The idea became cruelly apparent in her mind. She must destroy Lindstrum in order to possess him. She must beat down the passionate certitude of the man, puncture his blind, roaring egomania, take away from him his genius and then he would turn to her. Her thought at this point gave itself over to the passion in her. Anger filled her and a strange viciousness as though she had something under her hands to tear to pieces. Her clear-thinking mind was a weapon--a thing she could use to destroy a rival with. And if it destroyed Lief along with the rival, what matter? Slowly the morbidity of her position grew. Levine was an ally. His talk gave her ideas--directions in which to think. She disliked his attitude. The man was an insincerity. There was also something unctuous and cowardly about him. He never stood up for his notions in the face of conservatively indignant people. He capitulated and even denied his beliefs or lack of beliefs. Yet in the nihilism to which he pretended she found a background for her own thinking. Nihilism to Levine was a conversational pastime. To Doris it became a despairing hope for salvation. She poured over books, carefully questioned the secrets of life, not like a philosopher seeking answers but like a Messalina questing for poisons. Her debates with Lindstrum were at first casual and good-natured. A humility before his genius made her unable to assert herself. He could hurl his mystic word sequences at her and their beauty made her incapable of appreciating their lack of psychologic content.