allare walked on, staring into the heavy weave of
flakes.

"A great white leopard prowling silently," he murmured. "It snows. The
moon has come down and walks beside me. The wind blows and the moon
gallops away on a white horse. A gentle annihilation. The night has
fallen asleep and this is a dream that pirouettes in its head. The
street becomes a bridal couch.

"Ah, the snow is like my madness. It snows, snows. I climb silently
among soft branches and white leaves. Delirium sleeps with a finger to
its pale lips. I must continue to think. The storm hangs like a
forgotten sorrow in my heart. But my thought persists. It crawls like a
little wind through the forgotten storm. It rides carefully from flake
to flake.

"I overtake myself. What a quaint imbecile I am. Or rather, was. In my
effort to emancipate myself from life, I succeeded only in handing
myself over to my senses. And my senses, I perceive, belong not to me
but to the procreative principles of biology. They have been loaned to
me by a master chemist. When I die my cherished soul will disintegrate
into nothing. It will become a useless thing. It will unquestionably go
to a Heaven which is as non-existent as itself. Heaven is the emptiness
into which souls vanish. Very good. But my senses, these are immortal.
They will, in some inexplicable way, I am certain, continue their idiot
career.

"I must consider them. I have learned one thing. They are indifferent to
reality and unreality. They contain life within themselves. All that
exists outside them is extraneous--shadows among which they divert
themselves.

"The hallucination that overpowered me but never seduced my intelligence
became a reality to them. She was a shadow with which my senses diverted
themselves. Then why do I look upon the business as illogical? The
illogical thing is not that I feel tired from striking her who had no
tangible existence, but that I should be able to reason beyond the reach
of my senses. Yes, that I should succeed in wresting them from their
prey. For the shadows with which the senses divert themselves are
tyrants they may never hope to abandon. Man is at the mercy of his
phantoms. Behold, I arrive at a conclusion which means I am bored with
the subject.

"I prefer the snow. But there is time for the snow. I must establish
premises. Climb out of the abyss on a ladder of premises. What did I
say about logic? Oh, yes, the persuasive repetition. One flake remains
invisible. A