It was then that I said to
Clodagh:
'Clodagh, your presence at the bed-side here somehow does not please me.
It is so unnecessary.'
'Unnecessary certainly,' she replied: 'but I always had a genius for
nursing, and a passion for watching the battles of the body. Since no
one objects, why should you?'
'Ah!... I don't know. This is a case that I dislike. I have half a mind
to throw it to the devil.'
'Then do so.'
'And you, too--go home, go home, Clodagh!'
'But _why_?--if one does no harm. In these days of "the corruption of
the upper classes," and Roman decadence of everything, shouldn't every
innocent whim be encouraged by you upright ones who strive against the
tide? Whims are the brakes of crimes: and this is mine. I find a
sensuous pleasure, almost a sensual, in dabbling in delicate drugs--like
Helen, for that matter, and Medea, and Calypso, and the great antique
women, who were all excellent chymists. To study the human ship in a
gale, and the slow drama of its foundering--isn't that a quite thrilling
distraction? And I want you to get into the habit at once of letting me
have my little way----'
Now she touched my hair with a lofty playfulness that soothed me: but
even then I looked upon the rumpled bed, and saw that the man there was
really very sick.
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