stirs in all this wintry stench of mid-Paris, and bears it to the bourne of my life-long pilgrimage which I shall always vaguely discern but never reach. The sea is there, amethystine; a shore of crisp velvet sand, deserted; sweeping green banks; a sweetly melancholy, faint rustle of leaves; deep-hued flowers discreet in number, for each has its individuality; not one is superfluous.
"Silence composed of infinite soft sounds, as whiteness is composed of infinite colours. A terrace, high windows flung open, a glimpse of spacious rooms which my soul can enter when night falls.
"Music which comes from the flowers or from within me and pervades the afternoon but has no locus. Music and perfume which mingle, which gently thrill, which stir the curtains of the high windows, the foliage of trees, music and perfume which give life to the sea air, which like interweaving recitatives hover above the ocean's rhythm.
"And a presence felt, guessed, but not seen: a radiant figure so perfectly unlike, yet so strangely like me, for it has a beauty I have ever coveted. It comes and goes, brushing me invisibly in its flight. It is young, fresh, eager, iridescent, suddenly languid, suddenly animated, suddenly visible, splashed with the blue-purple-green of the water, the yellow of the sunshine, the green of the trees, the red of the flowers, a red that throws off glints of orange and purple like rubies. The figure is echoed by a rhythmic fragrance, perfume that comes in a pattern. Its movements are determined by, or determine my music. It has the fragility, the grace of a vision, yet it makes me conscious of my body, stirs my veins to new measures. It mocks and challenges, and the music and perfume deepen to riot, and I am running to its urge, leaping, pursuing, nearing, touching draperies of gossamer, catching laughter tossed to me like bubbles, capturing, subduing, at the music's dictate.
