And so I left the safety of
a species, of Fanny and children, for the barrenness of Cytherea.
"That's her secret, what she's forever smiling at--her power, through
men's vanity, to conquer the earth. She's the reward of all our
fineness and visions and pleasure, the idol of our supreme
accomplishment: the privilege of escaping from slavery into impotence,
the doubtful privilege of repaying the indignities of our birth." His
rigid strained face was drenched with sweat. "We made her out of our
longing and discontent, an idol of silk and gilt and perverse fingers,
and put her above the other, above everything. She rewarded us, oh,
yes--with promises of her loveliness. Why shouldn't she be lovely
eternally in the dreams of men?
"Then, finally, Savina and Cytherea were merged again. In Savina her
passion, always abnormal, hadn't been spent; there she was younger than
the youngest girl I knew; incomparably more dangerous. She, too, had
been constrained by the artificial, by conventionality; and when the
moment of reality came it broke William Grove, Fanny, Helena and
Gregory--all the threads that precariously held us. She was stronger
than I, Savina was the goal and I was only the seeker--that was the
difference between us--and in absorbing me she was content."
"That is very ingenious," Daniel told him. "Do you notice that the
smoke is thicker in the east?"
"Not more in one direction than in another," Lee answered indirectly;
"in the east and south, the north and west, up above and underneath.
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