Then the man and the woman awake and mount up to the heavens, crushing the gods like vermin.

Man, on that day, is called Titan, or Malthus.

The Indian So Celebrated by Theophrastus

THE INDIAN SO CELEBRATED BY THEOPHRASTUS

Access to the hall was through a double door.

The “Indian” opened the first door, closing it behind him. He heard the bolt slip on the other side, drawn by Bathybius, to be opened only twenty-four hours later. On his own side of the door he drew the inside bolt, and stretched out his arms toward the second door. . .

It had opened while his back had been turned, and he recognized, leaning against the doorjamb, all pink and naked, and seemingly transparent in the lamplight, the smiling Ellen Elson

With his beard, his pince-nez, and his conventional garments, Marcueil had divested himself of all remembrance of the world.

All that remained were a man and a woman, free, face to face, for eternity.

Twenty-four hours, was that not an eternity for a man who claimed that no number had any importance?

It was the alone at last of a man and a woman renouncing everything in order to be cloistered in each other’s arms.

“Is it possible?” sighed their mouths, and they said no more, for they united.

But a cold irony retained its grip on Marcueil who, though powdered with red-gold dust and made up like an Indian, was – as he suddenly recognized – as basically ridiculous as Marcueil, the man of the world.

“Alone at last!” he laughed sneeringly, pushing Ellen away. “And the seven harlots who’ll be coming, and the doctor who’ll be watching?”

Ellen laughed in turn, discordantly, like a drunken streetwalker, the most beautiful of all laughs.

“There are your women! There!” (she grabbed something off the bed and threw it like a blade at the “Indian’s” breast) “– the key to your woman-safe! It’s well locked! I’m keeping them for you, and they’re in good hands. But they are mine, your women, because you are mine! ‘How many are you?’ a barefoot little man, wrapped in a monk’s robe, once asked me. It’s simple enough: I AM SEVEN! Is that enough for you, my dear ‘Indian’?”

“It’s crazy!” said Marcueil who, with his predilection for infinites, seemed at the moment disposed to infinite coldness. “That doctor who’s going to see. . . he’ll recognize you.”

“I’ve brought a mask,” said Ellen.

“What an idea! Your driver’s mask, as though lots of women wear them, and Miss Elson were not known as a driving enthusiast! Everyone has seen it. Bathybius will recognize you all the more easily, that’s all.”

“My masks are all pink, and this one is black!”

“That’s a woman’s reasoning.”