y
thoughts from channels which go down to madness and despair. The
lifelike quality of the portrait made it easier to talk aloud, and as
the spell grew I found myself talking with the softness of the lover.

There is a power in the spoken word. The mere act of giving audible
expression is a spur to thought. Sitting alone and debating how
uncertainly the wretched spark of life sputtered at the wick of my
being, I was the craven. When I talked to the picture whose lips smiled
as though all the world were brave, I grew ashamed of my terror.

Leaving my cave in the morning to forage and reconnoiter with the pistol
at my belt, I would carry with me, as a fragrant memory, the gracious
smile of her lips and the royal fearlessness of her eyes. Her image
nerved me to endurance; gave me a shoulder touch on normal thought, and
enabled me to hold in memory the world for which her evening gown and
pearls were symbols--and in deeply morbid moments this saved me from
losing my grip. Certainly, it was all an artificial stay--a ludicrous
pretense--but it served--and that is the final test of any love or any
creed. It served.

As these forces worked, I, at times, forgot that the picture was that of
an unknown. Its reality was so strong that it came to stand for some one
I had left behind, whom I must live to rejoin; some one inexpressibly
dear whose love hung over me and safeguarded me like a powerful
talisman. Often, in my broken sleep, I would dream that I was sore beset
by a thousand dangers and had fled to my cave as animals have fled to
caves since the world began, and that I stood huddling there miserably,
awaiting the end. Then, in the dream, she would come out of the
picture, as Galatea stepped down from the lifelessness of granite into
rosy and animated warmth. My assailants always fell back before her
coming and I, despite my terror, would attempt to meet her gallantly.
She would open a hidden door in the side of the rock, and lead me
through it. And always, in this repeated and unvarying dream, beyond the
door we stepped into a brilliantly lighted room where men and women
chatted carelessly in evening dress and danced to the tinkle of stringed
instruments.

By these degrees the illusion grew until my pretense became a vagary and
obsession and to me ceased to be a pretense. I fell back on occultism
and told myself that I had succeeded by mere concentration of mind in
forcing her to project her astral self across the world,