He regarded himself curiously as, to a large extent, the result of all
the ages that had multiplied since the heated tropics held the early
fecundity of human life. A Haitian lunged by with out-turned palms
hanging at his knees, a loose jaw dropped on a livid gullet flecked
with white, and a sultry inner consciousness no more than a germinal
superstition visible in fixed blood--suffused eyes. He had an odor, Lee
fantastically thought, of stale mud. Well--there he was and there was
Lee Randon, and the difference between them was the sum of almost
countless centuries of religions and states and sacrifice and slaughter
He had a feeling that the accomplishment was ludicrously out of
proportion to all that had gone into it. For the only thing of value,
the security of a little knowledge, was still denied him. What, so
tragically long ago, Africa begged from the mystery of night, from
idols painted indifferently with ochre or blood, he was demanding from
a power which had lost even the advantage of visibility. His
superiority was negligible. It was confined relatively to unimportant
things--such as an abstract conception of a universe partly solid and
partly composed of ignited gases revolving in an infinity of time and
space. He was aware of sensations, flavors, champagnes, more delicate
than the brutality of a rape conceived in strangling gulps of sugar
cane rum.
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