der an erection is the current of Mallare
and of an infinity of Mallares.

"'Ah, the penis of this dwarf is repellent because that which Mallare so
fondly called his own--his desires--is revealed to him as grotesquely
promiscuous. Yes, the penis is the democratic tabernacle of Life. Under
its little Moorish roof, the senses of the race kneel in common prayer.

"'Observe it, Mallare. It is the rendezvous of expiring illusions, the
gathering place of the anonymities which utilize man, beasts and plants.
See how this curious dwarf staggers like a bewildered stranger in its
shadow. He is an outcast. He is useless. He is no longer necessary. Life
which made a pretense of him, enters its tabernacle and closes the doors
on him. Here is the great secret. Here stands the grim tyrant before
whose delicious wrath man bows himself into annihilations.

"'Ah, what a marvelous tabernacle! It moves and Goliath follows. It
points and Goliath runs after it. An infatuated tabernacle that fancies
itself going to Heaven! It is proud. It struts. Goliath shuffles after
it like a forlorn little nigger in the wake of a circus. It leaps. And
Goliath gallops after it. Aha! he lies on his back impaled. But she!'

"They were on the couch. She sat beside him but her eyes still sought
me. Noises issued from Goliath. He rolled on his back, kicking crooked
legs and yelping.

"I watched her white body spread over him. Her eyes left me and my
rhetoric dwindled into a sigh. I was alone with a spectacle. Goliath,
masturbating with a phantom--but not as Mallare had done. No, not as
Mallare who had lain indifferent beside his Frankenstein. For Goliath's
arms were around her, his legs entwined her. His body, an insanity in
itself, made a mate beneath her more incredible than she. There was
silence. Then she screamed!----

"Yes, Mallare closed his eyes. A coldness tip-toed out of his heart. She
was laughing. Her laughter entered his ears--a noise that was like a
witch's flight of sound. But who was it laughed? Mallare, Mallare
laughed. It was his voice in the phantom that laughed at him. It was his
hallucination he had loved that now gave itself to a little monster. And
it was his hate that designed this laugh, a thing that pierced the
heaven in which he sat. Mallare closed his eyes, a God shuddering before
His own atheism. Yes, rhetoric now. It is easy to write. My words
embroider themselves.

"But then, when the laugh struck Mallare! Ah, there was cur