534
PAR TIS A N REV I
EW
greater strength, new nerves and a heavier burden. For the balance
(that natural grasp of moral justice which the old murder-tempted
God still retained-should one hope so?) would be laden even more
on the side of Hell, and Marion knew what would await him
in
Hell,
the onanisms of connectionless Time, the misery of the lone chance
in one out of the billion of billions to be born again. Hell, where
hi
nerves (those advance intimations of a flesh-terrifying fire, electric
in its cold) would unwind their unspeakable tension with the
infinite
slowness of nerves become Time
in
its death, the spiral spinning a
blind spider's path, the dreams collapsed, the empire lost, and
the
fate of the world as well. That was the worst; that was
his
vanity;
that he alone held the vision to save the world-if he failed,
his
agony would be all the greater for what a rage would be the rage
of God. "Am I ready to die?" he asked, listening to the answer
the
portrait might give him, and the portrait said
no
with a murmur
of
dread. The balance of his deeds was dark to Marion, and from the
Godlike eye with which he contemplated himself he knew he
was
still not Godly enough-it was beyond his vision whether the force
of his life upon others had accelerated new love into the agonized
fatigues of Time, or had worn Time closer to her hag-ridden dreams
of the destiny that failed because it arrived too late, of the new
conception which never reached the womb.
5.
The invitations went out, were accepted by almost everyone,
the plane was chartered-two flights proved necessary-and the party
took place. It is with some hesitation, and the awareness I have
1»
trayed certain premises of your interest that I must now confess I
will
not be able to describe this party in rousing detail until we have taken
a wide and still unforseeable circuit of the past. Indeed, it would
probably be a disservice of the first order to insert ourselves too
brusquely into the dance of deceptions, seductions, perversions and
passions which the party whipped into being, the riot of new rela·
tionship an unlashed acceleration of the Time of the ladies and gentle–
men present. To be successful a party must become more than
was
intended for it, and I can give you the mean contentment that
by
my measurement the party was not boring: it had an artist's
ll$)rt·
ment of those contradictory and varied categories of people who
