She ceased; he trembled.  Then she went on, smiling, “You see, Gwynplaine, to dream is to create; to desire is to summon.  To build up the chimera is to provoke the reality.  The all-powerful and terrible mystery will not be defied.  It produces result.  You are here.  Do I dare to lose caste?  Yes.  Do I dare to be your mistress—­your concubine—­your slave—­your chattel?  Joyfully.  Gwynplaine, I am woman.  Woman is clay longing to become mire.  I want to despise myself.  That lends a zest to pride.  The alloy of greatness is baseness.  They combine in perfection.  Despise me, you who are despised.  Nothing can be better.  Degradation on degradation.  What joy!  I pluck the double blossom of ignominy.  Trample me under foot.  You will only love me the more.  I am sure of it.  Do you understand why I idolize you?  Because I despise you.  You are so immeasurably below me that I place you on an altar.  Bring the highest and lowest depths together, and you have Chaos, and I delight in Chaos—­Chaos, the beginning and end of everything.  What is Chaos?  A huge blot.  Out of that blot God made light, and out of that sink the world.  You don’t know how perverse I can be.  Knead a star in mud, and you will have my likeness.”

She went on,—­

“A wolf to all beside; a faithful dog to you.  How astonished they will all be!  The astonishment of fools is amusing.  I understand myself.  Am I a goddess?  Amphitrite gave herself to the Cyclops. Fluctivoma Amphitrite.  Am I a fairy?  Urgele gave herself to Bugryx, a winged man, with eight webbed hands.  Am I a princess?  Marie Stuart had Rizzio.  Three beauties, three monsters.  I am greater than they, for you are lower than they.  Gwynplaine, we were made for one another.  The monster that you are outwardly, I am within.  Thence my love for you.  A caprice?  Just so.  What is a hurricane but a caprice?  Our stars have a certain affinity.  Together we are things of night—­you in your face, I in my mind.  As your countenance is defaced, so is my mind.  You, in your turn, create me.  You come, and my real soul shows itself.  I did not know it.  It is astonishing.  Your coming has evoked the hydra in me, who am a goddess.  You reveal my real nature.  See how I resemble you.  Look at me as if I were a mirror.  Your face is my mind.  I did not know I was so terrible.  I am also, then, a monster.  O Gwynplaine, you do amuse me!”

She laughed, a strange and childlike laugh; and, putting her mouth close to his ear, whispered,—­

“Do you want to see a mad woman? look at me.”

She poured her searching look into Gwynplaine.  A look is a philtre.  Her loosened robe provoked a thousand dangerous feelings.  Blind, animal ecstasy was invading his mind—­ecstasy combined with agony.  Whilst she spoke, though he felt her words like burning coals, his blood froze within his veins.  He had not strength to utter a word.

She stopped, and looked at him.