y part
imperfectly. I missed my cues. I had the blighting self-consciousness
of the amateur. And yet the idiot mummery was intensely real. Amid the
laughter of the silent shadowy gods I thought to flee from the stage.
I came to Verona and find I am still acting my part. I have always been
acting. I have been acting since I was born. The reason of our being
is to amuse the high gods with our histrionics. The earth itself is the
stage, and the starry ether the infinite auditorium.

The high gods have granted to their troupe of mimes one boon. Each has
it in his power to make the final exit at any moment. For myself I feel
that moment is at hand. One last soliloquy, and then like the pagliacco
I can say with a sigh, _"La commedia e finita_--the play is played out,"
and the rest will be silence. At all events I will tell my own story. My
"History of Renaissance Morals" can lie in its corner and rot, whilst I
shall concern myself with a far more vital theme--The Morals of Marcus
Ordeyne. The rough entries in my diary have been a habit of many futile
years; but they have never sufficed for self-expression. I have not
needed it till now. But now, with Judith and Carlotta gone from me, my
one friend, Pasquale, cut for ever from my life, even the sympathetic
Polyphemus driven into eternity by my murderous hand, I feel the
irresistible craving to express myself fully and finally for the first
and last time of my life. It will be my swan song. What becomes of it
afterwards I care not.

And when the last word is written, I shall go to the Pinacoteca and
stand again before the Morone fresco, and if the _Miseratrix Virginum
Regina_ still simpers at me, I shall take it as a sign and a token. I
shall return to this marble cavern and make my final exit. It will
be theatrically artistic--that I vow and declare--which no doubt will
afford immense pleasure to the high gods in their gallery.

PART II

CHAPTER XXI

It is some two years since I stood for the second time in the Pinacoteca
of Verona and sought to read my fate in the simpering countenance
of Morone's _Miseratrix Virginum Regina_. I met what might have been
expected by a person of any sense--the self-same expression on the
painted face as I had angrily found there two months before when I began
to write the foregoing pages. But as I had no sense at all in those days
I accepted the poor battered Madonna's lack of sympathy for a sign and a
token, went home