I first saw her on the Recurring Staircase. I had turned
sharply the angle of the hall and placed my foot upon the
bottom step and then I saw her. She was motionless; her back
I saw, and O! the grace of her neck and the glory of her
arrested attitude. I feared to move, but some portent,
silent, inflexibly eloquent, haled me to the staircase. That
was years ago. I called to her, strange calls, beautiful
sounding names; I besought her to bend her head, to make
some sign to my signals of urgency; but her glance was
aloft, where, illumined by the scarlet music of a setting
sun, I saw in a rich, heavy mullioned embrazure,
multi-colored glass shot through with drunken despairing
daylight. Again I prayed my Lady of the Recurring Staircase
to give me hope by a single dropped glance. At last I
conjured her in Love's fatal name, and she moved
languorously up the steep slope of stairs. As if the spell
had been thwarted, I followed the melodious adagio of her
footsteps. That was many years ago. She never mounted to the
heavy mullioned embrazure with the multi-colored glass shot
through with drunken, despairing daylight. I never touched
the hand of the Lady of the Recurring Staircase; for the
stairs were endless and I stood ever upon the bottom step;
and the others below slipped into eternity; and all this was
many years ago. I never have seen the glorious glance of My
Lady on the Recurring Staircase.
They all applauded, Hodson violently. "I say, old chap, what would you
have gained by overtaking the lady?" Cintras sniffed; Berkeley
laughingly remarked that the staircase reminded him of the sort you see
at a harvest with a horse on the treadmill.
"Don't, fellows!" begged Merville. "Cintras is giving one ideas to-day
for a symphonic poem. Go on, Cintras, with more, but in a different
vein. Something in the classical style."
"I can't do that," responded Cintras, trying not to look flattered, "but
I will show you my soul when overtaken by doubt." "Cintras, your soul,
like Huysmans's, is a cork one." They were aghast, for Hodson the
uncultured one had spoken.
"And where, Hoddy, my brave lad, did you ever in the world hear of
Huysmans?" he was asked. "I read that; I thought it fitted Cintras. His
soul is like a cork ball that is always rebounding from one idea to
another." "Bravo! you will be the literary, not the night city editor,
before you die, Hoddy." ... Then Cintras read another prose-poem which
he had named