Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1920-12-16
CHAP S.ss ONE
The Street of Strange Faces.
!. THE DARK CORNER.

!. THE DARK CORNER.
The way Of the thing was ever the
same: 1t befell without warning; or
rather, the girl had never learned to
take heed of signs which seemed plain
enough in retrospect, when she sat
alone and puzzled her pretty head
with the dark riddle of this shadow
life which set her so widely apart from
every girl she knew and, indeed, from
all the rest of humankind.
She had a day of restlessness,
whose every hour brewed it's new Pc
euliar mood. Whose every mood was
purpOseleSs. with times of almost
feverish gayety. causeless, fitful, fugi-
tive, and other times when for no rea-
son in her knowledge she caught her
self signing long fiuttering signs that
shook her strangely. So might ones
spirit sigh In WEAKNESS. faint with
the burden of incessant strife with
some great antagonist of unguessable
identity.
Toward nightfall all these were
soothed away into feeling of serene
poise and self-possession and sat
urate with consciousness of the rich,
strong wine of vitality that quickened
her. she thought of life in the likeness
of wide placid river, wherein she
drifted like fearless Swimmer-a
stream whose waters were warm,
sweet and calm with a penetrating
quality of delicious calm she never
dreamed could be disturbed, so abso-
lutte it seemed, so permanent, so i'm
perturbable.
Only the signs persisted oddly, as
if her spirit knew moments of melan-
choly of which her mind knew moth
ing.
And insidiOusly the tranquil surface
of that contentment was flawed by APP
prehensiOnS of nameless danger, OF
peril latent. stealthy and implacable;
as though the swimmer surmised some
monStrous shape of evil skulking I'M
|. seen. in those opaque deeps-Or felt
herself subtly enSnared by current
whose irresistible set was altogether
toward destruction.
to come, panic paralyZed in her the
instinct of self-preServatiOn: though
horror brimmed the cup of being, she
made no effort to fight free but, as
one who knows that struggling must
prove vain, resigned herself and let
the baneful current work its will with
her. Fascination, too. was at work.
deep within her a mad desire to go
again that wild way she had so often
gone. and once more be, and do, and
see.
so it is. so it must be- with those
to whom drug has made itself
thing of Life and Death.
On ahead, like a bend in the river.
waited that turning in her psychic
life which she knew as the Dark Cor
ner: while she lay passive in the
grasp Of that power which so obscure
ly had its rise in her yet was repug-
nant to her, being at once her Will
and her Necessity. And as the Dark
Corner drew mOmentarly more near.
the TRANSMISSION which she termed the
Change was effected by what may only
be described as a cNnvulsion of her
very soul, after which came lassitude
a vast enervatiOn in which all linger-
ing traces of reluctance were Obliter-
ated.
Now she was no longer herself, but
another woman than the one she
knew. a strange woman clothed in her
own flesh but in no other way akin to
her Self of everyday, having no
thought, impulse or emotion with
which that Self could sympathize,
save such as may he considered con-
mon TO all her sex. Yet. incOmpre-
hensibly, consciousness of the old
self-identity survived; and though (as
she conceived it) dispossessed from
its tenement. her Self continued by
her body's side, observant, critical. in
trigued. something amused.
In this wise rounding the Dark Cor
ner. she passed into that place which
she had named the Street of Strange
Faces: and the enigma of this confu-
sion of Self with nOn-Self was forgot
ten in the rush of exotic sensation
and emotion, excitement and lawless
Joy, which invariably accompanied
definite and final commitment to re-
newed pursuit of these transcendental
adventures.