The soul of the creature that I tortured, that I killed, has passed into
the body of the woman whom I love; and that soul, which once slept in
its new cage, is awake now, watching, plotting perhaps. Unconsciously to
itself, it recognises me. It stares out upon me with eyes in which
the dull terror deepens to hate; but it does not understand why it
fears--why, in its fear, it hates. Intuition has taken the place of
memory. The Change of environment has killed recollection, and has left
instinct in its place.
Why did I ever sit down to write? The recalling of facts has set the
seal upon my despair.
Instinct only woke in Margot when I brought her to the place the soul
had known in the years when it looked out upon the world from the body
of an animal.
That first day on the terrace instinct stirred in its sleep, opened its
eyes, gazed forth upon me wonderingly, inquiringly.
Margot’s faint remembrance of the terrace walk, of the flower-pots, of
the grass borders where the cat had often stretched itself in the sun,
her eagerness to see the chamber of death, her stealthy visits to that
chamber, her growing uneasiness, deepening to acute apprehension,
and finally to a deadly malignity--all lead me irresistibly to one
conclusion.
The animal’s soul within her no longer merely shrinks away in fear of
me. It has grown sinister. It lies in ambush, full of a cold, a stealthy
intention.
That curious, abrupt change in Margot’s demeanour from avoidance to
invitation marked the subtle, inward development of feeling, the silent
passage from sensation only towards action.
Formerly she feared me. Now I must fear her.
The soul, Crouching in its cage, shows its teeth. It is compassing my
destruction.
The woman’s body twitches with desire to avenge the death of the
animal’s.
I feel that it is only waiting the moment to spring; and the inherent
love of life breeds in me a physical fear of it as of a subtle enemy.
For even if the soul is brave, the body dreads to die, and seems at
moments to possess a second soul, purely physical, that cries out
childishly against pain, against death.
Then, too, there is a cowardice of the imagination that can shake the
strongest heart, and this resurrection from the dead, from the murdered,
appals my imagination. That what I thought I had long since slain should
have companioned me so closely when I knew it not!