I laugh aloud. "So that is the meaning of this honoured apparition! A mirror of myself--spirit of ruin--symbolic poem on the course of my ideas. Pshaw! I know that trick. Every brainless Christmas poet knows it, too. You must come with a more powerful charm, O Thea, spirit of the herb tea! Good-bye. My time is too precious to be wasted by allegories." "What have you to do that is so important?" she asks, and I seem to see the gleam of her eyes behind the folds of the veil, whether in laughter or in grief I cannot tell. "If I have nothing more to do, I must die," I answer and feel with joy how my defiance steels itself in these words. "And that seems important to you?" "Moderately so." "Important to whom?" "To myself, I should think, if to no one else." "And your creditor--the world?" That was the last straw. "The world, oh, yes, the world. And what, pray, do I owe it?" "Love." "Love? To that harlot? Because it sucked the fire from my veins and poured poison therein instead? Behold me here--wrecked, broken, a plaything of any wave. That is what the world has made of me!" "That is what you have made of yourself! ... The world came to you as a smiling guide.... With gentle finger it touched your shoulder and desired you to follow. But you were stubborn. You went your own way in dark and lonely caverns where the laughing music of the fight that sounds from above becomes a discordant thunder. You were meant to be wise and merry; you became dull and morose." "Very well; if that is what I became, at least the grave will release me from my condition." "Test yourself thoroughly." "What is the use of that now? Life has crippled me.... What of joy it has to offer becomes torture to me.... I am cut loose from all the kindly bonds that bind man to man.... I cannot bear hatred, neither can I bear love.... I tremble at a thousand dangers that have never threatened and will never threaten me. A very straw has become a cliff to me against which I founder and against which my weary limbs are dashed in pieces.... And this is the worst of all. My vision sees clearly that it is but a straw before which my strength writhes in the dust.... You have come at the right time, Thea. Perhaps you carry in the folds of your robe some little potion that will help me to hurry across the verge." Again I see a gleam behind the veil--a smiling salutation from some far land where the sun is still shining. And my heart seems about to burst under that gleam. But I control myself and continue to gaze at her with bitter defiance.