“You remember wanting to tell them all,” I said. “To make it known, the monstrous secret.” “Perhaps,” he said, “in the very beginning, there was some desperate passion to communicate.” “Yes, communicate,” I said, cherishing the word. And I remembered that long-ago night on the stage when I had so frightened the Paris audience. “But that was in the dim beginning,” he said slowly, speaking of himself. His eyes were narrow and remote as if he were looking back over all the centuries. “It would be folly, it would be madness. Were humanity ever really convinced, it would destroy us. I don’t want to
...more
