. . . And did he not give us dreams fantastic beyond
any lust whatever? What is the good of talking? Speak to your own
kind. I have gone, Benham. I am lost already. There is no
resisting any more, since I have drugged away resistance. Why then
should I come back? I know now the symphonies of the exalted
nerves; I can judge; and I say better lie and hear them to the end
than come back again to my old life, to my little tin-whistle solo,
my--effort! My EFFORT! . . . I ruin my body. I know. But what of
that? . . . I shall soon be thin and filthy. What of the grape-
skin when one has had the pulp?"
"But," said Benham, "the cleanness of life!"
"While I perish," said Prothero still more wickedly, "I say good
things. . . ."
13
White had a vision of a great city with narrow crowded streets, hung
with lank banners and gay with vertical vermilion labels, and of a
pleasant large low house that stood in a garden on a hillside, a
garden set with artificial stones and with beasts and men and
lanterns of white porcelain, a garden which overlooked this city.
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