is to be found elsewhere, at home not in the commodity ofnwonderful flesh, but in both mind and spirit, unsexed, beingnneither the common attributes of man or woman, and beingnalso ageless. And yet so long as she is, or seems to be, bothnyoung and, beautiful, she remains desperately vulnerable.nMany times she has found herself longing for deformity, forna siege of any one of the much-dreaded diseases of the fleshnwhich would, at least, set mind and spirit truly free from thentyranny of skin and bones. Times when, staring into anlooking glass, she can picture herself clawing that face tonbloody ribbons and raw meat. Times when, looking into ancandle flame or a fire on the hearth, when she has felt ansudden need to plunge herself into it as (for so she heardnlong ago and now imitates) great ladies, from time to time,ndo place their pampered bodies into warm and scentednbaths. …nScent was how he came to her first, an odor of flowers, ofnsweet distilled perfume. And she thought, first, as shenfollowed her servant into the chamber where he was waitingnfor her, facing away towards the fire, that there must be anlady here to see her. Entered the chamber and saw instead anbroad thick back, square, close-clipped hair, flecked withnstains and spots of grey, he turning, hght on the balls of hisnfeet, like a dancer or a swordsman, at the first sound of hernshoes in the room, not smiling, yet somehow affablenenough, polite, a formal greeting and not without a certainnwarmth. Hat in hand, sword at hip, a gentleman cleariy, yetnclad in plain and sturdy clothes; a military gentleman, then,nevery inch of him, turning and taking a step or two, nonmore, his eyes brightening and then (it seemed) withdrawingninto shaded, hooded caves of a badly scarred face.nSeeing Captain Barfoot, firelight behind him, candlelightnrevealing his face and figure, she surveyed, unflinching, thenbrute handiwork of visible scars and then looked away intonhis shadowed eyes, eyes which had seemed bitter cold to hernwhen they first brightened; stared into his shadowy eyes, andnshe had been suddenly possessed of a vision of herself,nstepping out of all her clothing then and there, shining inncandlelight and firelight^ swimming in those dark cold eyesnand shedding her skin as well. In a moment exchanging, as itnwere, one body for another. Wrapping his strangely bruisednand battered flesh around herself, the bones of her, like anwarm old cloak or a clean wool blanket, now at lastnON INSPIRATIONnI have often thought how interesting anmagazine paper might be written by anynauthor who would—that is to say, whoncould—detail, step by step, the processesnby which any one of his compositionsnattained its ultimate point of completion.nWhy such a paper has never been givennto the world, I am much at a loss to’nsay—but, perhaps, the autorial vanitynhas had more to do with the omissionnthan any one other cause. Most writersnLIBERAL ARTSn—poets in especial — prefer having itnunderstood that they compose by anspecies of fine frenzy — an ecstaticnintuition—and would positively shuddernat letting the public take a peep behindnthe scenes, at the elaborate and vacillatingncrudities of thought—at the truenpurposes seized only at the last momentn—at the innumerable glimpses of ideanthat arrived not at the maturity of fullnview — at the fully matured fanciesndiscarded in despair as unmanageable—nat the cautious selections and rejectionsn’somehow truly invulnerable; because now at last she wouldnbe the owner, in a wink of time, of all of the pains and griefnand woe she had been hidden from and which had been sonfar hidden from her. Because now at last, and all like thenputting on of a cloak, just so simply, no worse pains or griefnor woe could ever come to pass.nWhat she felt, then, was first a raw surge of desire, almostnirresistible, an overwhelming need not merely to offer upnherself, the best parts of herself, to him and his pleasuren(whatever that might prove to be), but, much more, to offernherself, such as she was, to him so completely that she wouldnbe wholly consumed by the act of giving, itself, and would,nin truth, become him, to live in the habitation of his largenbones, the architecture of-his hard muscles, ugly scars,nlooking out on a world restored and more, transformed andntransfigured, through his dark cold brutal eyes.nAt first she heard next to nothing of what he was saying.nShe looked into the shadowed sockets of his eyes and felt antremble of weakness, as if she were about to faint. As if theynhad been toying and teasing with each other at love for halfnan hour.nWhatever it was he wanted to know, she could not havenlied to him to save her own life.nAs it was, he did not ask anything much of her. He stoodnthere politely, fastidiously clean, scented with some expensivenwomanly perfume, and proceeded to ask her for thatnfoolish Papist pamphlet which she had never seriouslynconsidered publishing.nHe sternly warned her, in his soft, hoarse voice. Tippednher a slight bow of farewell, put on his hat and turned andnwalked outside to vanish into the noisy, busy street. Walkednaway to leave her standing there with a weak-kneed feelingnclose to the pangs of extreme hunger and thirst. Until, afterna moment, hearing herself breathing deeply like a sleeper,ncoming to herself like waking, with a fury at the weaknessnshe had allowed to invade herself, she went back to thenprinting shop. Where, finding them all loafing and idlingnthe time away, she fell into a shouting rage.nLater she could not, would not tell Hunnyman much ofnthis. And nothing at all about her deepest feelings. Lestnsomeway or other it might serve him to free himself from thensense of need. His hunger and thirst for her. The enchantednspell of his own false and foolish hopes.n<^nnn— at the painful erasures andninterpolations—in a word, at the wheelsnand pinions — the tackle for sceneshifting—nthe step-ladders andndemontraps—the cock’s feathers, thenred paint and the black patches, which,nin ninety-nine cases out of the hundred,nconstitute the properties of the literarynhistrib.n— Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophynof Composition,” 1846nMAY 1989/21n