I Await the Devil's Coming - Unexpurgated and Annotated by Mary MacLane Page B

what kind of children will you bear me, little MacLane?” he would say.
    “I will bear wonderful, beautiful children - with great pain.”
    “But you hate pain,” the Devil will say, “and when you are in your pain you will hate me.”
    “But no,” I will answer. “Pain that comes of you will be ineffable exaltation.”
    “And how will you treat me, little MacLane?”
    “I will cast myself at your feet; or I will minister to you with divine tenderness; or I will charm you with fantastic deviltry; when you weep, I will melt into tears; when you rejoice, I will go wild with delight; when you go deaf I will stop my ears; when you go blind I will put out my eyes; when you go lame I will cut off my legs. Oh, I will be divinely dear, unutterably sweet!”
    “Indeed you are rarely sweet,” the Devil will say. And I will be in transports.
    Oh, Devil, Devil, Devil!
    Oh, misery, misery of Nothingness!
    The days are long - long and very weary as I await the Devil’s coming.

    January 31
    To-day as I walked out I was impressed deeply with the wonderful beautifulness of Nature even in her barrenness. The far-distant mountains had that high pure transparent look, and the nearer ones were transformed completely with a wistful beseeching attitude that reminded me of my life. It was late in the afternoon. As the sun lowered, the pure lavender of the far-away hills was tinted with faint-rose, and the gray of the nearer ones with sun-color. And the sand - my sand and barrenness - almost flushed consciously in its wide, mysterious magnitude. In the sky there was a white cloud. The sky was blue - blue almost as when I was a child. The air was very gentle. The earth seemed softened. There was an indefinite caressing something over all that went into my soul and stirred it, and hurt it. There was that in the air which is there when something is going to happen. - Only nothing ever happens. - It is rare, I thought, that my sand and barrenness looks like this. I crouched on the ground, and the wondrous calm and beauty of the natural things awed and moved me with strange, still emotions.
    I felt, and gazed about me, and felt again. And everything was very still.
    Presently my eyes filled quietly with tears.
    I bent my head into the breast of a great gray rock. Oh, my soul, my soul, I said over and over, not with passion. It is so divine - the earth is so beautiful, so untainted - and I, what am I? It was so beautiful that now as I write, and it comes over me again, I can not restrain the tears.
    Tears are not common.
    I felt my wooden heart, my soul, quivering and sobbing with their unknown wanting. This is my soul’s awakening. Ah, the pain of my soul’s awakening! Is there nothing, nothing to help this pain? I am so lonely, so lonely - Fannie Corbin, my one friend, my dearly-loved anemone lady, I want you so much - why aren’t you here! I want to feel your hand with mine as I felt it sometimes before you went away. You are the only one among a worldful of people to care a little - and I love you with all the strength and worship I can give to the things that are beautiful and true. You are the only one, the only one - and my soul is full of pain, and I am sitting alone on the ground, and my head lies on a rock’s breast. -
    Strange, sweet passions stirred and waked somewhere deep within me as I sat shivering on the ground. And I felt them singing far away, as if their faint voices came out of that limitless deep, deep blue above me; and it was like a choir of spirit-voices, and they sang of love and of light and of dear tender dreams, and of my soul’s awakening. Why is this - and what is it that is hurting so? Is it because I am young, or is it because I am alone, or because I am a woman?
    Oh, it is a hard and bitter thing to be a woman! And why - why? Is woman so foul a creature that she must needs be purged by this infinite pain?
    The choir of faint, sweet voices comes to me incessantly out of the blue. My wooden heart and my