He felt a childish pride in his cunning at having avoided being trapped
into an admission. He simultaneously thought of Tansy as a genuine
witch and as a potentially neurotic individual who had to be protected
at all costs from dangerous suggestions. The liquor made his mind work
by parts, and the parts had no check on each other. His consciousness began to black out for indeterminate intervals. Things began to happen by fits and starts. They were wailing "St. James' Infirmary." He was thinking: "Why shouldn't the women be the witches? They're
the intuitionalists, the traditionalists, the irrationalists. And
like Tansy, most of them are never quite sure whether or not their
witchcraft really works." They had shoved back the carpet and were dancing to "Chloe." Sometime
or other she had changed to her rose dressing gown. He was thinking: "In the second category, put the Estrey dragon. Animated by a human or nonhuman soul conjured into it by Mrs. Gunnison
and controlled through photographs. Inhibited by the Protective Screen
so long as the Protective Screen existed." They had put on a record of Ravel's "Bolero," and he was beating out
the rhythm with his fist. He was thinking: "All sculpture has a magical significance, from the
Aurignacian Venus to Epstein's 'Genesis.' The underlying intention has
always been to produce a manikin capable of being animated by sorcery." He was watching Tansy as she sang "St. Louis Blues" in a hoarsely
throbbing voice. It was true, just as Welby had always maintained, that
she had a genuine theatrical flair. Make a good chanteuse. He was thinking: "Tansy stopped the Estrey dragon with the knots. But she'll have a hard time doing anything like that again, because
Mrs. Gunnison has her book of formulas and can figure out ways to
circumvent." They were sharing a highball that would have burned his throat if his
throat had not been numb, and he seemed to be getting most of it. He was thinking: "The tarot stick figure of the man and the truck is
the key to a group of related sorceries. Cards began as instruments of
magic, like sculpture. These sorceries aim at finishing me off. The
bull-roarer acts as an amplifier or reinforcement. The thing standing
behind me, with the flat voice and heavy hands, is a guardian, to see
to it that I do not deviate from the path appointed. Bull-roaring and
flat voice were associated in my dream. Narrow corridor. Two weeks
more." The strange thing was that these thoughts were not altogether
unpleasant. They had a wild, black, poisonous beauty of their own,
a lovely, deadly shimmer. They possessed the fascination of the
impossible, the incredible. They hinted at unimaginable vistas. Even
while they terrorized, they did not lose that chillingly poignant
beauty. They were like the visions conjured up by some forbidden drug. They had the lure of an unknown sin and an ultimate blasphemy. He could
understand the force that compelled the practitioners of black magic
to take any risk. His drunkenness made him feel safe. It had broken his mind down into
its ultimate particles, and those particles were incapable of fear
because they could not be injured. Just as the iron molecules of a
battleship are quite safe from the bomb which blows the battleship
apart. But now the particles were whirling crazily. Consciousness was wavering. They were in each other's arms. Tansy was asking eagerly, coaxingly, "All that's mine is yours? All
that's yours is mine?" The question awakened a suspicion in his mind, but he could not grasp
it clearly. Something made him think that the words held a trap. But
what trap? His thoughts stumbled and reeled. She was saying--it sounded like the Bible--"and I have drunk from your
cup and eaten from your table--"

Her face was a blurred oval, her eyes like misty jewels. "Everything you have is mine? You give it to me without hindrance and
of your own free choice?" Somewhere a trap. But the voice was irresistibly coaxing, like tickling fingers. "All you have is mine? Just say it once, Norm, just once. For me." Of course he loved her. Better than anything else in the world. "Yes ... yes ... everything--" he heard himself saying. And then his mind toppled and plunged down into a fathomless ocean of
darkness, and silence, and peace. IX. Sunlight made a bright, creamy design on the drawn blind. Filtered
sunlight filled the bedroom, like a coolly glowing liquid. The birds
were chirruping importantly. He closed his eyes again and stretched
luxuriously. Let's see, it was about time he got started on that article for the
_Journal_. And there was still some work to do on the revision of
his "Textbook of Ethnology." Lots of time, but better get it out of the
way. No telling when the government would want another brochure. And
he ought to have a serious talk with Bronstein about his thesis. That
boy had some good ideas, but he needed a balance wheel. And then his
address to the Off-campus Mothers. Might as well tell them something
useful--

Eyes still closed, he enjoyed to the full that most pleasant of
sensations--the irresistible tug of work a man likes to do and is able
to do well. No need to get started right away, though. Today was too good a day for
golf to miss. Might see what Gunnison was doing. And then he and Tansy
had not made an expedition into the country this whole spring. He'd
talk to her about it at breakfast. Saturday breakfast was an event. She
must be getting it ready now. He felt as if a shower would make him
very hungry. Must be late. He opened an eye and focused the bedroom clock. Twelve thirty-five? Say, just when had he got to bed last night? What had he been doing? Memory of the past few days uncoiled like a loosed spring, so swiftly
that it started his heart pounding and brought him up with a jerk. Yet there was a difference. From the very first moment it all seemed
incredible and unreal. He had the sensation of reading the very
detailed case history of another person. His memories could not be made
to fit with his present sense of well-being. What was stranger, they
did not seriously disturb that sense of well-being. He searched his mind diligently for traces of supernatural fear, of the
sense of being watched and guarded, of that monstrous self-destructive
impulse. He could not discover or even suggest to himself the slightest
degree of such emotions. Whatever they had been, they were now part of
the past, beyond the reach of everything except intellectual memory. "Spheres of alien thought!" Why, the very notion was bizarre. And yet
somehow it had all happened. _Something_ had happened. His movement had automatically taken him under the shower. And now,
as he soaped himself and the warm water cascaded down, he wondered if
he ought not to talk it all over with Jones of psychology or a good
practicing psychiatrist. The mental contortions he'd gone through in
the last few days would provide material for a whole treatise!