10
Preface
The Alexandria which Mr. Buck has shown in such glowing and coloured pictures, on which the ancient and golden sunlight still shines and burns, was in a sense, an Abbey of Thelema. Men did as they pleased, and all that pleased them was sensual pleasure. To be sure, they still talked of the gods. They talked of Aphrodite; but Aphrodite was only an excuse; just as, to the bad Mason, a certain very solemn and awful ceremony is only an excuse for the banquet which follows it.
II
Yet all the while there was a sense, sometimes conscious, sometimes sub-conscious, that it wouldn't do. In Mr. Buck's pages you will find this half-murmur of dissatisfaction, the sad murmur which finds its expression in the lines:
