"My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for
our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never
for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing
so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is
a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician
when I tell you so?"

So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to
sleep before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn't,
and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front
pattern and the back pattern really did move together or
separately.


On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of
sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a
normal mind.

The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and
infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well
underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you
are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples
upon you. It is like a bad dream.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of
a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an
interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in
endless convolutions--why, that is something like it.