clear of seaweed; but when I came to the old part, I found it so
slippery with green weed that I had to climb up on to the roadway. I
looked towards the Temple of the Alchemical Rose, where the fishermen
and the women were still shouting, but somewhat more faintly, and saw
that there was no one about the door or upon the pier; but as I
looked, a little crowd hurried out of the door and began gathering
large stones from where they were heaped up in readiness for the next
time a storm shattered the pier, when they would be laid under blocks
of granite. While I stood watching the crowd, an old man, who was, I
think, the voteen, pointed to me, and screamed out something, and the
crowd whitened, for all the faces had turned towards me. I ran, and
it was well for me that pullers of the oar are poorer men with their
feet than with their arms and their bodies; and yet while I ran I
scarcely heard the following feet or the angry voices, for many
voices of exultation and lamentation, which were forgotten as a dream
is forgotten the moment they were heard, seemed to be ringing in the
air over my head.

There are moments even now when I seem to hear those voices of
exultation and lamentation, and when the indefinite world, which has
but half lost its mastery over my heart and my intellect, seems about
to claim a perfect mastery; but I carry the rosary about my neck, and
when I hear, or seem to hear them, I press it to my heart and say:
'He whose name is Legion is at our doors deceiving our intellects
with subtlety and flattering our hearts with beauty, and we have no
trust but in Thee'; and then the war that rages within me at other
times is still, and I am at peace.