hold such another. By gad,
sir, a queen of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could
have seen my queen today, Vincent said. How young she was and radiant
(Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of
muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded
us were in bloom: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with
pollen floating by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have
cooked on a stone a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them that
Periplipomenes sells in his booth near the bridge. But she had nought
for her teeth but the arm with which I held her and in that she nibbled
mischievously when I pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill, four
days on the couch, but today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril.
She is more taking then. Her posies tool Mad romp that she is, she had
pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you
will not think who met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was
walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not,
a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet
creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a
slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the
very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely
echo in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going
by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had
poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more
propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and
withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label.
Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far
away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be
born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the
incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos
told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian
priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the
moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha
of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these
were therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second
constellation.

However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him
being in some description of a doldrums