There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time, when I must have been very young—­I fancy at some college or school in England, and his name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lost in the vast limbo of past things.  But he used to talk continually about certain ‘Black’ and ‘White’ Powers, and of their strife for this world.  He was a short man with a Roman nose, and lived in fear of growing a paunch.  His forehead a-top, in profile, was more prominent than the nose-end, he parted his hair in the middle, and had the theory that the male form was more beautiful than the female.  I forget what his name was—­the dim clear-obscure being.  Very profound was the effect of his words upon me, though, I think, I used to make a point of slighting them.  This man always declared that ‘the Black’ would carry off the victory in the end:  and so he has, so he has.

But assuming the existence of this ‘Black’ and this ‘White’ being—­and supposing it to be a fact that my reaching the Pole had any connection with the destruction of my race, according to the notions of that extraordinary Scotch parson—­then it must have been the power of ’the Black’ which carried me, in spite of all obstacles, to the Pole.  So far I can understand.

But after I had reached the Pole, what further use had either White or Black for me?  Which was it—­White or Black—­that preserved my life through my long return on the ice—­and why?  It could not have been ‘the Black’!  For I readily divine that from the moment when I touched the Pole, the only desire of the Black, which had previously preserved, must have been to destroy me, with the rest.  It must have been ’the White,’ then, that led me back, retarding me long, so that I should not enter the poison-cloud, and then openly presenting me the Boreal to bring me home to Europe.  But his motive?  And the significance of these recommencing wrangles, after such a silence?  This I do not understand!

Curse Them, curse Them, with their mad tangles!  I care nothing for Them!  Are there any White Idiots and Black Idiots—­at all?  Or are these Voices that I hear nothing but the cries of my own strained nerves, and I all mad and morbid, morbid and mad, mad, my good God?

This inertia here is not good for me!  This stalking about the palace! and long thinkings about Earth and Heaven, Black and White, White and Black, and things beyond the stars!  My brain is like bursting through the walls of my poor head.

To-morrow, then, to Constantinople.

* * * * *