om myself! For a long time now
I have not seen the prince of Chang in my dreams.

He decided he would clear and make ready the quiet sweet place in his
heart, the room of ghosts, so that she might come and dwell there. But
induce the spiritual mood of the quiet October evening much as he could,
yet she never came again.

From his mind now there faded the memory of her face, the memory of her
hands, the memory of her voice even. With every week, with every month,
with the year, she was gone. Like a lost thought, or a lost bar of
music, she was gone. She had been there, but she was gone. The loss was
a terrible one. To lose one who was alive was much. But to lose one who
was dead was unbelievable, horrible ... to lose the sun ... forever....

He decided he could go back to the Prado of Marseilles, where first he
had met her, where she would of all places have kept a tryst with him.
There was no risk. The folk of the sea come and go so easily, so
invisibly, and French law bothers itself little about the killing of a
woman of evil repute.... One of the risks of the trade, they would say.
Even had there been a risk he would have gone. He went.

It was a dark night, a night of wind with the waves lashing the shore. A
night of all nights to keep a tryst with a dead woman. Immense privacy
of darkness and howling winds and lashing waves. With awe he went there,
as a shaken Catholic might enter a cathedral, dubious of the mystery of
the eucharist, expecting some silent word, some invisible sign from the
tabernacle.... He went with bowed head....

She never came.

He concentrated until all faded away, even the night, the wind, the
insistent waters. He might have been standing on a solitary rock in an
infinite dark sea, to which there was no shore. Asking, pleading,
willing for her.... But she never came....

And it suddenly became inevitable to him that she would not come; and
slowly, as a man comes slowly out of a drug into consciousness, he came
back into the world of lights and laughter and sodden things. And
turning on his heel without a look, he went away....

He never called to her again.... He thought over her often enough, and
she had never been real, he decided. His mother and his wife had been
real. They were their own dimensions. But she was something he had made
in his head, as an author may create a character. She was a
hallucination. And she had never been with him after death; that had
been a mirage in th