My Mind goes in no grooves made by other minds. It lives like a witch in a forest, weaving its spells, revelling in smooth vivid adventure. When I look at a round gray stone by a roadside I look at it not as a young woman, not as a person, not as an artist, nor a geologist, nor an economist, but as Me--as Mary MacLane--and as if there had not before been a round gray stone by a roadside since the world began. When I look at a chair with my somber eyes I say to the chair, ‘What other persons may see when they look at you, chair, I don’t know--how could I know? But I well know what I see and that what I see is uninfluenced by other eyes that may have looked at you, were they Aristotle’s or Galileo’s or an archangel’s.’ There may be equally egotistic viewpoints--in Waco-Texas, or Japan, or Glasgow-Scotland or the Orkney Islands, where not? I don’t know--I don’t care. What is it to me? I know my own virile vision and that it thrills and informs and translates me as if crackling bright-jagged lightnings broke along my sky.-- It is a night of whispering breezes and little restless clouds, an endearing night. It makes solitude a delectation. I walked out in it, in the glimmering moonlight past buildings and houses and mines and mounds. My thoughts as I walked were all of Me: how fascinating is Me. I came in at midnight and met Me in my mirror. I pushed my three-cornered hat backward off my head, slipped out of my loose coat and dropped my squeezed gloves. I sank fatiguedly into a little chair before the mirror, tipped the chair forward on its front legs, rested my elbows on the bureau and my chin in my hands and looked absorbedly at myself. Lovingly, tenderly, discerningly, marveling and absorbed and deeply fascinated I looked at Me in the mirror. ‘You enchanted one!’ said I, ‘You Witch-o’-the-world! you Mary MacLane!--who you are _I_ don’t know--what you are I but partly know. You’re my Companion, my Familiar, my Lover, my wilding Sweetheart--I love you! I know that--that’s enough. I love your garbled temper, your aching thoughts, your troubled Heart, your wasted spirit. I know much, much, much of you and love you! I love your beauty-sense and your proud scornful secret super-sensitiveness. I love your Eyes and your Lips and your bodily Fire and Ice’-- --to _know_ oneself: apart from all the world! One looking at me sees a cold-poised young woman, reserved and aloof, slightly diffusing insolence and inspiring misgivings.